Fisher-rosemount Systems, Inc

Aaron C Jones

Michael George Ott

Julian Kevin Naidoo

Deborah R Colclazier

Karen Johnson

Nathan W Pettus

Dawn M Marruchella

Godfrey Roland Sherriff

Andrew E Cutchin

Mark J Nixon

Robert Burke Havekost

William George Irwin

David L Deitz

Robert G Halgren, Iii

James Henry Moore, Jr

Camilo Fadul

Tusar Nanda

Sean Hernandez

Sireesha Dakoju

Antonio Ubach

Krishna Joshi

Narayanan Doraiswamy

Matthew Villarrubia

Christopher Cho

Brian Lamothe

Danny H Do

Nathan William Pettus

A process plant and industrial control system architecture includes a generalized compute fabric that is agnostic or indifferent to the physical location at which the compute fabric is implemented, includes one or more physical control or field devices located at one or more specific sites at which a product or process is being manufactured and further includes a transport network that securely provides communications between the compute fabric and the pool of physical devices. The compute fabric includes an application layer that includes configured containers or containerized software modules that perform various control, monitoring and configuration activities with respect to one or more devices, control strategies and control loops, sites, plants, or facilities at which control is performed, and includes a physical layer including computer processing and data storage equipment that can be located at any desired location, including at or near a site, plant, or facility at which control is being performed, at a dedicated location away from the location at which control is being performed, in re-assignable computer equipment provided in the cloud, or any combination thereof. This control architecture enables significant amounts of both computer processing and IT infrastructure that is used to support a process plant, an industrial control facility or other automation facility to be implemented in a shared, in an offsite and/or in a virtualized manner that alleviates many of the communications and security issues present in current process and industrial control systems that attempt to implement control with shared or virtualized computing resources set up according to the well-known Purdue model. The industrial control system architecture is protected via more secure and customizable techniques as compared to those used in Purdue model-based control systems. For example, communications between any (and in some cases, all) endpoints of the system may be protected via one or more virtual private networks to which authenticated endpoints must be authorized to access. Endpoints may include, for example, containerized components, physical components, devices, sites or locations, the compute fabric, and the like, and the VPNs may include mutually-exclusive and/or nested VPNs. External applications and services, whether automated or executing under the purview of a person, may access information and services provided by the system via only APIs, and different sets of APIs may be exposed to different users that have been authenticated and authorized to access respective sets of APIs. A configuration system operates within the compute fabric to enable a user to easily make configuration changes to the compute fabric as the user does not generally need to specify the computer hardware within the compute fabric to use to make the configuration changes, making it possible for the user to deploy new configuration elements with simple programming steps, and in some cases with the push of a button.

Securing access of a process control or automation system

The described techniques enable a skid communicator tool to quickly change network settings to those required by a particular skid or network in a process control environment with which a user of the tool wishes to establish communication. These techniques are helpful because skids and networks in process control environments often require different network settings for any device attempting to communicate with the skids or network, and a user often must manually load these network settings every time she wants to communicate with a different network or skid. By contrast, the techniques enable the skid communicator tool to seamlessly connect to, disconnect from, and reconnect to any of the skids or other networks requiring different network settings with minimal input from the user, thus enabling a user to easily move through and interact with different areas, units, or equipment of the process control environment.

Quick connection techniques for skid communicator tool

Apparatuses, systems, and methods of the present disclosure may provide access security in a process control system. For example, current biometric data representative of a user may be acquired and compared to stored biometric data representative of previously identified users. Access to the process control system may be authorized when the current biometric data matches stored biometric data.

Apparatuses, systems, and methods for providing access security in a process control system

An Ethernet I/O card (EIOC) scanner device facilitates configuration of a process control system to enable improved integration of EIOC-enabled field devices (and associated field device variables) into the process control system. Specifically, the EIOC scanner may: (i) analyze decoder files for EIOC-enabled field devices to automatically identify field device variables that the EIOC-enabled field devices are configured to transmit or receive; and (ii) quickly and easily facilitate a configuration of the process control system to integrate into the process control system the EIOC-enabled field devices and any associated field device variables identified by the EIOC scanner.

Ethernet I/O card scanner

A method for efficiently managing configuration of modular control systems includes Detecting a communicative coupling between a workstation and a modular control system, determining whether an active project stored in a memory of the workstation matches a saved project stored in a memory of the modular control system, where each of the active project and the saved project includes a respective coordinated set of data for controlling operation of the modular control system, and when the active project and the saved project do not match, (i) determining whether the active project is correct for the modular control system, and (ii) when the active project is incorrect the modular control system, automatically providing, via an interactive user interface, a control for transferring at least a portion of the saved project from the memory of the modular control system to the active project in the memory of the workstation.

Assistant application for a modular control system

Techniques for assessing and managing versions of a configuration file associated with a modular control system of a process plant are described. According to certain aspects, systems and methods device may access data associated with multiple versions of a configuration file, including a computing device version and a control version, as well as a last backup instance of the configuration file. The systems and methods may compare the versions and determine any discrepancies between the versions, including which of the versions is the most recent. The systems and methods may present information associated with the comparison to enable a user to select which of the versions may be need to be updated, resolved, or provided to the controller so that the modular control system may be properly configured.

Systems and methods for assessing configuration files associated with a process control system

A modular control system includes a modular controller that implements control logic of the modular control system, where the controller is built natively on a platform of a distributed control system, equipment configured to perform a physical function in a process plant according to the control logic, and a configuration database storing configuration parameters of the modular control system. In a first mode of operation, the modular control system operates as a standalone module, and in a second mode of operation, the modular control system operates natively as one or several nodes of a distributed control system.

Systems and methods for merging modular control systems into a process plant

Methods and apparatus to identify a degradation of integrity of a process control system are disclosed. An example method includes identifying a file on a file system of the process control system. The example method further includes determining if the file is identified in a system profile, the system profile identifying files expected to be present. A degradation of integrity of the process control system is identified when the file is not identified in the system profile.

Methods and apparatus to identify a degradation of integrity of a process control system

A method of executing a batch process in a manufacturing environment according to a product recipe, such that the product recipe specifies a plurality of actions and a plurality of parameters, includes performing at least one action of the batch process corresponding to a first version of the product recipe, receiving a second version of the product recipe, such that the second version of the product recipe is distinct from the first version of the product recipe, suspending the execution of the batch process prior to completion of the batch process, and resuming the execution of the batch process according to the second version of the product recipe.

Online recipe synchronization in a real-time batch executive environment

Systems and methods for providing an integrated HMI application for monitoring and interacting with both batch and non-batch processes in a process plant are disclosed. A plurality of independent stand-alone software objects defining various batch process interface views are embedded within a non-batch process control interface application. A blackboard service is provided for storing batch control data used by the various stand alone software objects. The blackboard service may be adapted to communicate with a batch control server to receive batch control data for populating the various batch interface views with data relating to various batch processes being carried out in the process plant and to send instructions for controlling the various batches input by users via the various batch interface views. When executed by a processor, the stand alone software objects defining the various batch interface views read data from and write data to the blackboard service to communicate data between batch process interface views and preserve contextual information between interface views to allow efficient and intuitive navigation between batch process interface views.

Growing community of inventors

Round Rock, TX, United States of America

Aaron C Jones