Distributed control system

A distributed control system (DCS) is a computerised shows functional manufacturing levels using comput-
control system for a process or plant, in which au- erised control.
tonomous controllers are distributed throughout the sys-
Referring to the diagram;
tem, but there is central operator supervisory control.
This is in contrast to non-distributed control systems that
use centralised controllers; either discrete controllers lo- Level 0 contains the eld devices such as ow and
cated at a central control room or within a central com- temperature sensors, and nal control elements,
puter. The DCS concept increases reliability and reduces such as control valves
installation costs by localising control functions near the
process plant, but enables monitoring and supervisory Level 1 contains the industrialised Input/Output
control of the process remotely. (I/O) modules, and their associated distributed elec-
tronic processors.
Distributed control systems rst emerged in large, high
value, safety critical process industries, and were attrac- Level 2 contains the supervisory computers, which
tive because the DCS manufacturer would supply both the collect information from processor nodes on the sys-
local control level and central supervisory equipment as tem, and provide the operator control screens.
an integrated package, thus reducing design integration
risk. Today the functionality of SCADA and DCS sys- Level 3 is the production control level, which does
tems are very similar, but DCS tends to be used on large not directly control the process, but is concerned
continuous process plants where high reliability and secu- with monitoring production and monitoring targets
rity is important, and the control room is not geographi-
cally remote. Level 4 is the production scheduling level.

Levels 1 and 2 are the functional levels of a traditional

DCS, in which all equipment are part of an integrated
1 Structure system from a single manufacturer.
Levels 3 and 4 are not strictly process control in the tradi-
Computer
Center
Level 4
Production Scheduling
tional sense, but where production control and scheduling
takes place.
Coordinating Coordinating Level 3
Computer Computer Production Control

Supervisory
Computers
Supervisory
Computers
Supervisory
Computers
Supervisory
Computers
Level 2
Plant Supervisory 1.1 Technical points
C C C C C C C C Level 1
Direct Control

Level 0
Plant Plant
Field Level

Functional levels of a manufacturing control operation.

The key attribute of a DCS is its reliability due to the

distribution of the control processing around nodes in the
system. This mitigates a single processor failure. If a pro-
cessor fails, it will only aect one section of the plant pro-
cess, as opposed to a failure of a central computer which
would aect the whole process. This distribution of com-
puting power local to the eld Input/Output (I/O) eld
connection racks also ensures fast controller processing
times by removing possible network and central process-
Example of a continuous ow control loop. Signalling is by in-
ing delays. dustry standard 4-20 mA current loops, and a smart valve po-
The accompanying diagram is a general model which sitioner ensures the control valve operates correctly.

1
2 3 HISTORY

The processor nodes and operator graphical displays Boiler controls and power plant systems
are connected over proprietary or industry standard net-
works, and network reliability is increased by dual redun- Nuclear power plants
dancy cabling over diverse routes. This distributed topol- Environmental control systems
ogy also reduces the amount of eld cabling by siting the
I/O modules and their associated processors close to the Water management systems
process plant.
Water treatment plants
The processors receive information from input modules,
process the information and decide control actions to be Sewage treatment plants
signalled by the output modules. The eld inputs and out-
puts can be analog signals e.g. 4~ 20mA dc current loop Food and food processing
or 2 state signals that switch either on or o, such as Agro chemical and fertilizer
relay contacts or a semiconductor switch.
DCSs are connected to sensors and actuators and use Metal and mines
setpoint control to control the ow of material through Automobile manufacturing
the plant. A typical application is a PID controller fed by
a ow meter and using a control valve as the nal control Metallurgical process plants
element. The DCS sends the setpoint required by the pro-
cess to the controller which instructs a valve to operate so Pharmaceutical manufacturing
that the process reaches and stays at the desired setpoint.
Sugar rening plants
(see 4-20 mA schematic for example).
Large oil reneries and chemical plants have several thou- Agriculture Applications
sand I/O points and employ very large DCS. Processes
are not limited to uidic ow through pipes, however, and
can also include things like paper machines and their as- 3 History
sociated quality controls , variable speed drives and motor
control centers, cement kilns, mining operations, ore pro-
cessing facilities, and many others.
DCSs in very high reliability applications can have dual
redundant processors with hot switch over on fault, to
enhance the reliability of the control system.
Although 4-20 mA has been the main eld signalling
standard, modern DCS systems can also support eldbus
digital protocols, such as Foundation Fieldbus, probus,
HART, Modbus, PC Link etc, and other digital commu-
nication protocols such as modbus.
Modern DCSs also support neural networks and Fuzzy
logic applications. Recent research focuses on the syn-
thesis of optimal distributed controllers, which optimizes
a certain H-innity or the H 2 control criterion.[1][2]
A pre-DCS era central control room. Whilst the controls are cen-
tralised in one place, they are still discrete and not integrated into
one system.
2 Typical applications
Distributed control systems (DCS) are dedicated systems 3.1 Evolution of process control opera-
used in manufacturing processes that are continuous or tions
batch-oriented.
Processes where a DCS might be used include: Process control of large industrial plants has evolved
through many stages. Initially, control would be from
Chemical plants panels local to the process plant. However this required
a large manpower resource to attend to these dispersed
Petrochemical (oil) and reneries panels, and there was no overall view of the process. The
next logical development was the transmission of all plant
Pulp and Paper Mills (see quality control system measurements to a permanently-manned central control
QCS) room. Eectively this was the centralisation of all the
3.3 Development 3

tems, respectively. US-based Bristol also introduced their

UCS 3000 universal controller in 1975. In 1978 Valmet
introduced their own DCS system called Damatic (lat-
est generation named Valmet DNA[4] ). In 1980, Bailey
(now part of ABB[5] ) introduced the NETWORK 90 sys-
tem, Fisher Controls (now part of Emerson Electric) in-
troduced the PROVoX system, Fischer & Porter Com-
pany (now also part of ABB[6] ) introduced DCI-4000
(DCI stands for Distributed Control Instrumentation).
The DCS largely came about due to the increased avail-
A DCS control room where plant information and controls are ability of microcomputers and the proliferation of mi-
displayed on computer graphics screens. The operators are croprocessors in the world of process control. Com-
seated as they can view and control any part of the process from puters had already been applied to process automation
their screens, whilst retaining a plant overview. for some time in the form of both direct digital control
(DDC) and setpoint control. In the early 1970s Taylor
Instrument Company, (now part of ABB) developed the
localised panels, with the advantages of lower manning 1010 system, Foxboro the FOX1 system, Fisher Con-
levels and easier overview of the process. Often the con- trols the DC2 system and Bailey Controls the 1055 sys-
trollers were behind the control room panels, and all auto- tems. All of these were DDC applications implemented
matic and manual control outputs were transmitted back within minicomputers (DEC PDP-11, Varian Data Ma-
to plant. However, whilst providing a central control fo- chines, MODCOMP etc.) and connected to proprietary
cus, this arrangement was inexible as each control loop Input/Output hardware. Sophisticated (for the time) con-
had its own controller hardware, and continual operator tinuous as well as batch control was implemented in this
movement within the control room was required to view way. A more conservative approach was setpoint control,
dierent parts of the process. where process computers supervised clusters of analog
With the coming of electronic processors and graphic dis- process controllers. A CRT-based workstation provided
plays it became possible to replace these discrete con- visibility into the process using text and crude character
trollers with computer-based algorithms, hosted on a net- graphics. Availability of a fully functional graphical user
work of input/output racks with their own control proces- interface was a way away.
sors. These could be distributed around plant, and com-
municate with the graphic display in the control room or
rooms. The distributed control system was born. 3.3 Development
The introduction of DCSs allowed easy interconnection
and re-conguration of plant controls such as cascaded Central to the DCS model was the inclusion of control
loops and interlocks, and easy interfacing with other pro- function blocks. Function blocks evolved from early,
duction computer systems. It enabled sophisticated alarm more primitive DDC concepts of Table Driven soft-
handling, introduced automatic event logging, removed ware. One of the rst embodiments of object-oriented
the need for physical records such as chart recorders, al- software, function blocks were self-contained blocks
lowed the control racks to be networked and thereby lo- of code that emulated analog hardware control compo-
cated locally to plant to reduce cabling runs, and provided nents and performed tasks that were essential to process
high level overviews of plant status and production levels. control, such as execution of PID algorithms. Function
blocks continue to endure as the predominant method of
control for DCS suppliers, and are supported by key tech-
3.2 Origins nologies such as Foundation Fieldbus[7] today.
Midac Systems, of Sydney, Australia, developed an
Early minicomputers were used in the control of indus- objected-oriented distributed direct digital control system
trial processes since the beginning of the 1960s. The IBM in 1982. The central system ran 11 microprocessors shar-
1800, for example, was an early computer that had in- ing tasks and common memory and connected to a serial
put/output hardware to gather process signals in a plant communication network of distributed controllers each
for conversion from eld contact levels (for digital points) running two Z80s. The system was installed at the Uni-
and analog signals to the digital domain. versity of Melbourne.
The rst industrial control computer system was built Digital communication between distributed controllers,
1959 at the Texaco Port Arthur, Texas, renery with an workstations and other computing elements (peer to peer
RW-300 of the Ramo-Wooldridge Company.[3] access) was one of the primary advantages of the DCS.
In 1975, both Honeywell and Japanese electrical engi- Attention was duly focused on the networks, which pro-
neering rm Yokogawa introduced their own indepen- vided the all-important lines of communication that, for
dently produced DCSs - TDC 2000 and CENTUM sys- process applications, had to incorporate specic functions
4 3
such as determinism and redundancy. As a result, many
suppliers embraced the IEEE 802.4 networking standard.
This decision set the stage for the wave of migrations nec-
essary when information technology moved into process
automation and IEEE 802.3 rather than IEEE 802.4 pre-
vailed as the control LAN.
3.4 The network-centric era of the 1980s
In the 1980s, users began to look at DCSs as more than
just basic process control. A very early example of a
Direct Digital Control DCS was completed by the Aus-
tralian business Midac in 198182 using R-Tec Aus-
tralian designed hardware. The system installed at the
University of Melbourne used a serial communications
network, connecting campus buildings back to a control
room front end. Each remote unit ran two Z80 micro-
processors, while the front end ran eleven Z80s in a paral-
lel processing conguration with paged common memory
to share tasks and that could run up to 20,000 concurrent
control objects.
It was believed that if openness could be achieved and
greater amounts of data could be shared throughout the
enterprise that even greater things could be achieved. The
rst attempts to increase the openness of DCSs resulted in
the adoption of the predominant operating system of the
day: UNIX. UNIX and its companion networking tech-
nology TCP-IP were developed by the US Department
of Defense for openness, which was precisely the issue
the process industries were looking to resolve.
As a result, suppliers also began to adopt Ethernet-based
networks with their own proprietary protocol layers. The
full TCP/IP standard was not implemented, but the use of
Ethernet made it possible to implement the rst instances
of object management and global data access technol-
ogy. The 1980s also witnessed the rst PLCs integrated
into the DCS infrastructure. Plant-wide historians also
emerged to capitalize on the extended reach of automa-
tion systems. The rst DCS supplier to adopt UNIX and
Ethernet networking technologies was Foxboro, who in-
troduced the I/A Series[8] system in 1987.
3.5 The application-centric era of the
1990s
The drive toward openness in the 1980s gained momen-
tum through the 1990s with the increased adoption of
commercial o-the-shelf (COTS) components and IT
standards. Probably the biggest transition undertaken
during this time was the move from the UNIX operating
system to the Windows environment. While the realm of
the real time operating system (RTOS) for control appli-
cations remains dominated by real time commercial vari-
ants of UNIX or proprietary operating systems, every-
thing above real-time control has made the transition to
Windows.
HISTORY
The introduction of Microsoft at the desktop and server
layers resulted in the development of technologies such
as OLE for process control (OPC), which is now a de
facto industry connectivity standard. Internet technol-
ogy also began to make its mark in automation and the
DCS world, with most DCS HMI supporting Internet
connectivity. The 1990s were also known for the Field-
bus Wars, where rival organizations competed to dene
what would become the IEC eldbus standard for digital
communication with eld instrumentation instead of 4
20 milliamp analog communications. The rst eldbus
installations occurred in the 1990s. Towards the end of
the decade, the technology began to develop signicant
momentum, with the market consolidated around Ether-
net I/P, Foundation Fieldbus and Probus PA for process
automation applications. Some suppliers built new sys-
tems from the ground up to maximize functionality with
eldbus, such as Rockwell PlantPAX System, Honeywell
with Experion & Plantscape SCADA systems, ABB with
System 800xA,[9] Emerson Process Management[10] with
the Emerson Process Management DeltaV control sys-
tem, Siemens with the SPPA-T3000[11] or Simatic PCS
7,[12] Forbes Marshall[13] with the Microcon+ control sys-
tem and Azbil Corporation[14] with the Harmonas-DEO
system. Fieldbus technics have been used to integrate ma-
chine, drives, quality and condition monitoring applica-
tions to one DCS with Valmet DNA system.[4]
The impact of COTS, however, was most pronounced
at the hardware layer. For years, the primary business
of DCS suppliers had been the supply of large amounts
of hardware, particularly I/O and controllers. The initial
proliferation of DCSs required the installation of prodi-
gious amounts of this hardware, most of it manufactured
from the bottom up by DCS suppliers. Standard com-
puter components from manufacturers such as Intel and
Motorola, however, made it cost prohibitive for DCS sup-
pliers to continue making their own components, work-
stations, and networking hardware.
As the suppliers made the transition to COTS compo-
nents, they also discovered that the hardware market was
shrinking fast. COTS not only resulted in lower manu-
facturing costs for the supplier, but also steadily decreas-
ing prices for the end users, who were also becoming in-
creasingly vocal over what they perceived to be unduly
high hardware costs. Some suppliers that were previ-
ously stronger in the PLC business, such as Rockwell Au-
tomation and Siemens, were able to leverage their ex-
pertise in manufacturing control hardware to enter the
DCS marketplace with cost eective oerings, while the
stability/scalability/reliability and functionality of these
emerging systems are still improving. The traditional
DCS suppliers introduced new generation DCS System
based on the latest Communication and IEC Standards,
which resulting in a trend of combining the traditional
concepts/functionalities for PLC and DCS into a one for
all solutionnamed Process Automation System. The
gaps among the various systems remain at the areas such
 5

as: the database integrity, pre-engineering functionality, and provide on-the-go web access. Whether DCS will
system maturity, communication transparency and relia- lead IIOT or borrow key elements from remains to be es-
bility. While it is expected the cost ratio is relatively the tablished.
same (the more powerful the systems are, the more ex- Many vendors provide the option of a mobile HMI, ready
pensive they will be), the reality of the automation busi- for both Android and iOS. With these interfaces, the
ness is often operating strategically case by case. The threat of security breaches and possible damage to plant
current next evolution step is called Collaborative Process and process are now very real.
Automation Systems.
To compound the issue, suppliers were also realizing that
the hardware market was becoming saturated. The life 4 See also
cycle of hardware components such as I/O and wiring is
also typically in the range of 15 to over 20 years, making Annunciator panel
for a challenging replacement market. Many of the older
systems that were installed in the 1970s and 1980s are Building automation
still in use today, and there is a considerable installed base
of systems in the market that are approaching the end of EPICS
their useful life. Developed industrial economies in North First-out alarm
America, Europe, and Japan already had many thousands
of DCSs installed, and with few if any new plants being Industrial control system
built, the market for new hardware was shifting rapidly to
Industrial safety system
smaller, albeit faster growing regions such as China, Latin
America, and Eastern Europe. Safety instrumented system (SIS)
Because of the shrinking hardware business, suppliers be- TANGO
gan to make the challenging transition from a hardware-
based business model to one based on software and value-
added services. It is a transition that is still being made
today. The applications portfolio oered by suppliers ex-
5 References
panded considerably in the '90s to include areas such as
[1] D'Andrea, Raaello (9 September 2003). Distributed
production management, model-based control, real-time
Control Design for Spatially Interconnected Systems.
optimization, plant asset management (PAM), Real-time
IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control.
performance management (RPM) tools, alarm manage-
ment, and many others. To obtain the true value from [2] Massiaoni, Paolo (1 January 2009). Distributed Control
these applications, however, often requires a considerable for Identical Dynamically Coupled Systems: A Decompo-
service content, which the suppliers also provide. sition Approach. IEEE Transactions on Automatic Con-
trol.

[3] Stout, T. M.; Williams, T. J. (1995). Pioneering

3.6 Modern systems (2010 onwards) Work in the Field of Computer Process Control. IEEE
Annals of the History of Computing. 17 (1): 618.
The latest developments in DCS include the following doi:10.1109/85.366507.
new technologies:
[4] Valmet DNA
1. Wireless systems and protocols [5] INFI 90
2. Remote transmission, logging and data historian [6] DCI-4000
3. Mobile interfaces and controls [7] Foundation Fieldbus
4. Embedded web-servers [8] Foxboro I/A Series Distributed Control System

Increasingly, and ironically, DCS are becoming cen- [9] ABB System 800xA
tralised at plant level, with the ability to log into the re-
[10] Emerson Process Management
mote equipment. This enables operator to control both
at enterprise level ( macro ) and at the equipment level [11] SPPA-T3000
(micro) both within and outside the plant as physical lo-
[12] Archived copy. Archived from the original on 2007-03-
cation due to interconnectivity primarily due to wireless
29. Retrieved 2007-03-29. Simatic PCS 7
and remote access has shrunk.
As wireless protocols are developed and rened, DCS in- [13] Forbes Marshall
creasingly includes wireless communication. DCS con- [14] Azbil Corporation
trollers are now often equipped with embedded servers
6 6 TEXT AND IMAGE SOURCES, CONTRIBUTORS, AND LICENSES

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