How Instrumentation is Kept Evergreen

The Harvard Business Review article “How Smart, Connected Products Are Transforming Companies” (October 2015) notes how products of the past had a fixed design. However, smart connected products can be continually upgraded via software, often remotely. So how can smart plants take advantage of this capability of digital ecosystems? Here are my personal thoughts:

Appliances of the past such as a radio, TV, or CD player etc. could not be upgraded to take advantage of new features. You had to buy a new device to get new features. Today, the new generation of digital appliances such as smart phones, tablets, and watches etc. even the car can have their firmware upgraded to take advantage of new features and other enhancements – to stay evergreen. Process automation is no different. In most smart 4-20 mA devices the firmware is fixed. It cannot be upgraded. Most on-off devices don't even have a microprocessor in the first place. Upgrade to a new version with new features requires the whole device or at best the circuit board to be replaced, most of the time you are not even aware that manufacturers are shipping new improved versions of devices. Only when you replaced a device perhaps you discovered that it had evolved several versions and probably wondered just what enhancements the older devices are missing. Live firmware update makes it easy to take advantage of new enhancements which also incentivizes manufacturers to release new features.

Modern digital devices with digital communication networking such as the controller, gateways, and also fieldbus instrumentation can be upgraded on the fly by a simple firmware download to stay evergreen - all devices from a central location without even have to go to the field or replace any hardware. Firmware can even be upgraded “bumplessly”, while the field device is in operation, controlling the process, without upsetting the loop. This is ideal for the new generation of expert system software such as diagnostics and analytics embedded in devices. Expert system software is expected to see improvements over time, enhancing algorithms, as experience is gained from more installations. Firmware upgrade allows device vendors to improve the quality of the device and enables the plant to deploy these improvements quickly throughout the installed base of devices.

Many have experienced that during the time from system FAT in the factory staging area to start up at site the controllers, servers, and workstations might have one or more new versions. The controllers and computers are usually upgraded just before start up. The same is also be true for some of the field devices. A smart 4-20 mA instrument cannot be upgraded to the newer version, but fieldbus devices can. This way fieldbus instruments will also be at their latest and greatest as production starts.

Device manufacturers can get new product versions to market quicker to respond faster to plant needs. In the past it could take ten to fifteen years before a new version of a product was introduced because hardware and firmware changes went hand in hand. Today, and increasingly going forward, the firmware development cycle will be independent of hardware development and will be much faster, similar to that of software to some degree. New versions will be released based on feedback from sites; so plants can deploy them faster, benefitting sooner.

As the firmware is becoming an increasingly important part of a device, providing much of its functionality such as the core control function, the self-diagnostics, and process diagnostics it becomes increasingly important to be able to easily upgrade firmware to take advantage of new enactments, also in field instruments. With event of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and Industrie 4.0, this becomes even more significant. A few of these will be major releases while most will be minor releases. Minor firmware releases do not increment the device revision and therefore do not require a new DD file. Major firmware releases add new features that are communicated and thus increment the device revision and therefore come with a new DD file. Faster firmware development cycle may be of concern to some as introduction of new versions to the plant in the past could be a challenge if the DD files were not loaded on the system. Therefore, some system vendors now provide automatic DD update as a service to ensure the system has the latest DD files loaded, ready for use with the latest version devices. This is an important feature to look for in a new system. Some systems support the “compatibility revision” function and can handle a new version device based on an older DD file. This is another important feature to look for in a new system. Control Systems in the future will increasingly utilize the concept of device profiles which enable DD-less interchangeability by building the database based on the kind of device such as transmitter or valve rather than a specific manufacturer, model, and version. This will also be an important feature to look for in a system.

Therefore, make sure the digital ecosystem of system and devices supports firmware download to instruments in order to stay evergreen. See further explanation of firmware download in this brochure:

https://www.fieldbus.org/images/stories/technology/aboutthetechology/overview/fieldbus_brochure.pdf

Learn more about device revision management and DD files from the tutorial found here:

https://www.eddl.org/DeviceManagement/Pages/DeviceRevisionManagement.aspx

Well, that’s my personal opinion. If you are interested in how the digital ecosystem is transforming process automation click “Follow” by my photo. Let me know what you think by providing your feedback below, and click “Like” if you found this useful.