Emerson’s Mike Ames and Nick Koonce teamed up to discuss Ovation Lifecycle Planning and the need to think beyond periodic upgrades at the 2019 Ovation Users’ Group conference. Nick opened by defining lifecycle planning for the Ovation system:
Ovation Lifecycle Planning provides a broader or more holistic approach to best align Ovation products and services to customers’ business drivers (KPI’s) and problem-solving needs resulting in optimum system/asset performance & reliability and reduced total cost of ownership.
To better facilitate this lifecycle planning process, tools are available, such as lifecycle planning & guides aligned to customers business objectives, multi-year, multi-site implementation planning, comprehensive budget and project planning, and awareness presentations.
Total cost of ownership includes lifecycle planning, spares, repairs, service & engineering, proposal accuracy, budgeting, justification, po issuance, outage coordination, inventory, project management, startup, schedule change, change notices, performance requirements, optimization, security, service; response and quality.
Risk and cost assessments on the control system include system or component failures, threat of pending downtime or incidents, support unavailable or high cost (spares, repairs), incompatibility with new beneficial technologies, incompatibility for implementing new regulations, and lack of capacity or expansion capabilities.
From a benefits and optimization perspective, analysis should include increased reliability, new technology benefits, regulatory compliance, extend benefits fleetwide, improvements in KPI’s, faster profitability, increased profit, superior manageability, procurement leverage, and performance optimization.
Nick described the Ovation Advantage program which justifies the replacement of PLCs with Ovation Compact Controlllers. This reduces complexity and maintenance costs by eliminating PLCs and using the power and capacity of the existing Ovation control system.
One of the most important things for lifecycle planning is to engage the executive and decision makers. It’s important that they understand that industrial control systems are based on commercial off the shelf technologies that must be updated over time compared with proprietary control systems from the prior era. Component lifecycles range from 20 years for I/O systems and subsystems to less than 5 years for security software and solutions.
With a 10-year Microsoft support policy for each version of their operating systems, Ovation software needs to fit within this window and include development, testing and distribution. Other planning fundamentals include defining key parameters and timing and considering age and lifespan of existing components.
Working with Emerson, a customized lifecycle plan includes a strategic 5-10+ year plan, OEM recommendations, detail BOM, pricing & schedule, lowest cost alternatives, CAPEX/OPEX alternatives, SureService contract alignment, and justification support. The planning process to arrive at this plan includes a phase 1 kickoff to identify scope, goals and objectives. Phase 2 is to do a site assessment and data collection by performing interviews with key personnel, KPI alignment and system health assessment. Phase 3 is performing analysis and documentation and phase 4 is a final plan submittal by Emerson Lifecycle Services team and review with the end user.
With the plan in place, it is budgeted and executed over time to keep the system delivering the performance required to meet the business objectives and key performance indicators. Visit the Ovation Lifecycle Services section on Emerson.com for more on developing and executing a comprehensive lifecycle plan.
