Industrial controls equipment, like most things in life, go through maturity cycles. Companies realize that system failures attributed to process control equipment poses significant risks to the overall viability of the business operation. These businesses know they need to provide a comprehensive strategy to upgrade and retrofit their control platforms. IS possesses a vast legacy and modern controls platform knowledge to fill the gap between older systems and those that are the latest technology. Our engineering team will assist your organization by conducting brainstorm sessions, walk-downs, network, and system architecture reviews and develop overall migration plans.
Underlying legacy issues surface when:
- Manufacturer support and/or spare components are limited or nonexistent
- Controls engineering knowledge and support are challenging to find
- The local expert at the plant is retiring soon and a replacement cannot be properly trained
- Replacement parts prices drastically increase
- Equipment failures increase outside the acceptable limits with a negative impact on operations and end products
- Maintenance budget spending becomes unsustainable
Legacy System Upgrades
Our team offers deep experience from the ground up and fully understands the challenges related to legacy systems upgrades. Legacy systems include all systems and equipment that have a direct impact on the availability and maintainability of the plant and business operations. Some items to be considered within the scope of the upgrade may be less obvious such as instrumentation interface equipment, cabling, quality meters, and simple devices (versus smart devices). The following are some legacy considerations we will investigate, which may not normally be considered or addressed as part of the legacy upgrade or replacements by other engineering firms:
- Compliance and safety devices
- Instrumentation
- Simple devices
- Motor and/or pump controls
- Entire plant and operation network and its communication nodes
- Mechanical equipment where the interface is critical to the process
- Old non-supportable equipment
- Interposing devices
Controls Platform Transformation
IS possesses the process control strategies and the control system experience to provide the best solution for legacy systems upgrades or replacement. Our business will assist in your controls platform transformation with the following services:
- Walk down the manufacturing line or process
- Provide brainstorm session for ways to resolve perceived risks or obstacles to system enhancements
- Work closely with the client to define business requirements and translate this into process and systems migration plans
- Perform process and process control strategy analysis and feasibility cost analysis
- Provide total cost and budget for the project
- Retrieve controls programs from the existing control system
- Develop project execution plan and new systems architecture
- Design/retrofit instrumentation, panels, wiring, controls systems hardware and software
- Procure and install the all-new controls equipment
- Commissioning and start-up
- Provide training to the end customer
- Provide complete as-built documentation
