Fisher-rosemount Systems, Inc

Hart Communication Foundation

Fieldcomm Group, Inc.

Rosemount Inc.

Dust Networks, Inc.

Mark J Nixon

Terrence L Blevins

Ken J Beoughter

Gary Keith Law

Anthony Amaro, Jr

John Mark Caldwell

Eric Darrell Rotvold

Daniel Dean Christensen

Wilhelm K Wojsznis

Noel Howard Bell

Paul Richard Muston

Larry Oscar Jundt

Dennis L Stevenson

Robert Burke Havekost

Stephen Copps Gilbert

J Michael Lucas

Arthur Webb

Daniel R Strinden

Michael George Ott

Wallace A Pratt, Jr

Trevor Duncan Schleiss

Tomas Lennvall

Robin S Pramanik

Deji Chen

Peter Hartmann

Ling Zhou

Claudio Fayad

Mariana C Dionisio

Kent Allan Burr

David R Denison

Neil J Peterson

John Michael Lucas

Cindy Alsup Scott

Alper Turhan Enver

Julian Kevin Naidoo

Kim Ordean Van Camp

Marion A Keyes, Iv

Herschel Odis Koska, Ii

Robert G Halgren, Iii

Hoa Van Lai

Mike Lucas

Jian Li

Bruce Hubert Campney

Joshua Brian Kidd

Michael J Lucas

Ram Ramachandran

Cristopher Ian Sarmiento Uy

Christopher J Worek

Yuri Zats

Ron Eddie

Stephen Gerard Hammack

Gregory K McMillan

Tom Aneweer

Teresa A Chatkoff

Harvey S Smallman

Richard Clarence Dayo Fabros

Godfrey Roland Sherriff

Peter Wojsznis

Grant Wilson

John R Shepard

James Henry Moore, Jr

James Randall Balentine

Doyle Eugene Broom

Peter Zornio

Ryan Gallardo Valderama

Tennyson Hao

Matthew William Poplawski

Maia B Cook

Robert J Karschnia

Andrew Philip Dove

David L Deitz

Lee Allen Neitzel

Prashant Joshi

Duncan Schleiss

Camilo Fadul

Ebtesam S Tanyous

Terry Blevins

Song Han

Frederick R Enns

Dirk Thiele

Brandon Hieb

Thomas L Phinney

Dan Dean Christensen

Christopher John Felts

Vasiliki Tzovla

Shawn William Anderson

Kurtis K Jensen

Mitchell Stephen Panther

Jon Dale Westbrock

Aaron C Jones

Sergio Diaz

Kenneth D Krivoshein

Ashish Mehta

Keith Richard Bellville

Tiong P Ong

Riyaz M Ali

Molly Marie Firkins

Andrew E Cutchin

Adrian A Sanchez

Hubbard F Fellows

A digital safety lock of a field device or other process plant equipment activates in response to receiving a request from a locking party, thereby placing the device into a locked mode. While the device is in the locked mode, only the locking party may perform maintenance activities on, or otherwise functionally control, the device. While locked, the device may provide an indication of the locking party to any other device or application attempting to access or control the locked device. Other devices, applications, and users may communicate with the locking party or locking party device to request that the device be unlocked and/or to request the corresponding digital safety lock key. Upon the device receiving the correct digital safety lock key, the digital safety lock may be deactivated, and the device may enter into an unlocked state if no other digital safety locks remain activated for the device.

Digital safety locks in industrial process plants

A Multi-Purpose Dynamic Simulation and run-time Control platform includes a virtual process environment coupled to a physical process environment, where components/nodes of the virtual and physical process environments cooperate to dynamically perform run-time process control of an industrial process plant and/or simulations thereof. Virtual components may include virtual run-time nodes and/or simulated nodes. The MPDSC includes an I/O Switch which delivers I/O data between virtual and/or physical nodes, e.g., by using publish/subscribe mechanisms, thereby virtualizing physical I/O process data delivery. Nodes serviced by the I/O Switch may include respective component behavior modules that are unaware as to whether or not they are being utilized on a virtual or physical node. Simulations may be performed in real-time and even in conjunction with run-time operations of the plant, and/or simulations may be manipulated as desired (speed, values, administration, etc.). The platform simultaneously supports simulation and run-time operations and interactions/intersections therebetween.

Industrial control system architecture for real-time simulation and process control

Techniques for detecting suspicious performance of a throttling control valve (also referred to herein as a 'valve') in a process plant are described herein. For each of N time periods, a computing device determines and analyzes process parameter values for process parameters related to a valve to determine a status of the valve for the time period. The computing device compares the valve statuses over the N time periods to determine whether the valve is operating well for at least a threshold portion of at least a subset of the N time periods. In response to determining that the valve is not operating well for at least the threshold portion of at least the subset of the N time periods, the computing device determines that the valve is suspected of performing poorly, and provides an indication of the suspect valve to a user interface for display to a user.

Suspicious control valve performance detection

Techniques for configuring layouts and display view hierarchies and presenting display views in an operating environment of a process plant according to the layouts and display view hierarchies include providing graphical user controls at a graphical display configuration application for defining a layout. The layouts indicate a manner in which divide one or several display screens into one or several display regions, where each display region presents a display view that includes indications of process control elements. The graphical display configuration application also includes graphical user controls for defining a display view hierarchy of the display views by assigning levels of detail to the display views and designating some of the display views as subviews of other display views. An operator application obtains the defined layout and display view hierarchy and presents the display views at an operator workstation according to the obtained layout and/or display view hierarchy.

Systems and methods for configuring and presenting a display navigation hierarchy in a process plant

Process control systems for operating process plants are disclosed herein. The process control systems include control modules that are decoupled from the I/O architecture of the process plants using signal objects or generic shadow blocks. This decoupling is effected by using the signal objects or generic shadow blocks to manage at least part of the communication between the control modules and the field devices. Signal objects may convert between protocols used by control modules and field devices, thus decoupling the control modules from the I/O architecture. Generic shadow blocks may be automatically configured to mimic the operation of field devices within a controller executing the control modules, thus partially decoupling the control modules from the I/O architecture by using the shadow blocks to manage communication between the control modules and the field devices.

Architecture-independent process control

To provide a trusted, secure, and immutable record of storage operations executed by a storage center for storing measurement data provided by a process plant, techniques are described for utilizing a distributed ledger. When a data contributor such as a process plant generates measurement data, an encrypted version of a set of measurement data is transmitted to a storage center for secure storage of the measurement data. In some instances, the data contributor divides the set of measurement data into several subsets and transmits each subset of encrypted measurement data to a different storage center. Furthermore, the storage center generates a transaction for the storage operation which is recorded in a distributed ledger. When a data subscriber retrieves the encrypted measurement data from a storage center, the data subscriber can verify the authenticity of the data based on the information recorded in the distributed ledger.

Framework for privacy-preserving big-data sharing using distributed ledger

Publish/subscribe protocol for real-time process control

A process control system includes a plurality of field devices operating to control a process in a process plant. A communication infrastructure couples the plurality of field devices to a software-defined control system (SDCS) that receives data from the field devices and transmits instructions to the field devices. A data cluster, executing the SDCS, includes a plurality of compute nodes, each of which includes a processor executing an operating system, a memory, and a communication resource coupled to one or more other compute nodes in the data cluster. A plurality of instantiated containers, each of which is an isolated execution environment within the operating system of the compute node on which the container is instantiated, cooperate to facilitate execution of a control strategy in the SDCS. At least one of the containers in the SDCS is pinned to a component in the SDCS.

Systems and methods for associating modules in a software defined control system for industrial process plants

A system and method of performing communications over a communications network that uses a communication protocol having multiple different versions, provides for backwards compatibility when devices that support a higher or more secure version of the communication protocol are added to a network having devices that only support a lower or less secure version of the communication protocol. The system and method includes a technique of negotiating and establishing security procedures to be implemented in a communication connection between two devices on the network based on initial session request messages that indicate the version of the communication protocol supported by one or both of the devices. This system and method enable higher and lower protocol version devices (i.e., devices that conform to or that use the same communication protocol but that have different versions of the protocol installed therein) to communicate with one another in the most secure manner, thereby making higher version devices added to a network backward compatible with lower version devices already within the network.

Security negotiations between different versioned protocol devices to enable backward compatibility

To provide enhanced search capabilities in a process control system, a knowledge repository is generated that includes both contextual data and time series data. The contextual data organizes process plant-related data according to semantic relations between the process plant-related data and the process plant entities. When a user submits a process plant search query related to process plant entities within a process plant, search results are obtained by identifying a data set from the knowledge repository. The contextual data categorizes process parameters so that users can search for a particular process parameter category. Users can tag previous searches to execute them once again at a later time. Users can also execute queries for predicted or future states of process plant entities, batch queries regarding batch processes, soft sensor analytics and monitoring applications, parameter lifecycle applications, perturbation applications, step testing applications, or batch provisioning and scheduling applications using the knowledge repository.

Smart search UI

A highly versatile process control or factory automation field device is configured with an interface and communication connection structure that enables the field device to operate as a data server that communicates with and supports multiple different applications or clients, either directly or indirectly, while simultaneously performing standard process and factory automation control functions. Moreover, various different process control and factory automation network architectures and, in particular, communication architectures, support the versatile field device to enable the versatile field device to simultaneously communicate with multiple different client devices or applications (each associated with a different system) via a common communication network infrastructure, using the same or different communication protocols.

Highly-versatile field devices and communication networks for use in control and automation systems

A software defined (SD) process control system (SDCS) includes a method executed by a discovery service for inferring information regarding a physical or logical asset of a process plant. The method includes obtaining an announcement indicative of a presence of a physical or logical asset of the process plant. The method also includes obtaining, from a context dictionary, one or more parameters retrievable from the physical or logical asset or one or more services associated with the physical or logical asset that were not indicated in the announcement. Furthermore, the method includes storing a record of the discovered physical or logical asset in a discovered item data store. The record includes an indication of the identity of the physical or logical asset and the one or more parameters or one or more services associated with the physical or logical asset that were not indicated in the announcement.

Discovery service in a software defined control system

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

Methods, apparatus, systems, and articles of manufacture are disclosed. An example system to modify an industrial control system includes: at least one memory; programmable circuitry; and instructions to cause the programmable circuitry to: configure a device driver based on a first command, the first command to configure the device driver to initiate a device-specific communication protocol to collect input data from a publisher device coupled to the device driver; access a second command from a subscriber device, the second command to include a device identifier of the publisher device and to specify at least one of a communication mode, a device calibration configuration, or a fault detection configuration, the second command based on a product quality prediction, the product quality prediction generated using a spectral data model; and provide the second command to the device driver.

Methods and apparatus to perform process analyses in a distributed control system

Growing community of inventors

Round Rock, TX, United States of America

Mark J Nixon