How good is your control system?

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team May 22, 2006

Martin Filz, European Managing Director at Citect, shows how to tell whether your legacy control system is damaging your business.

Many engineers and managers believe if their current legacy system is operating without problems, there is no need to upgrade.

This may seem to save money in the short term but will potentially result in rising costs and lost business over a period of time.

In the meantime, their competitors have reduced costs and improved productivity and increased market share by implementing the latest technologies.

Even more problematic is that many companies have no defined method of determining the status of their current control systems.

They are not aware their existing systems are not operating at optimum efficiency.

The results of following questionnaire will provide an accurate assessment of whether it is critical that you update your current control system, as follows.

1: Is your control system more than 5 years old?.

2: Does your control system software run on unsupported operating systems (Win 95/98, WinNT etc)?.

3: Is the future for the control system software uncertain, ie little or no investment in future releases or the vendor has multiple products to maintain?.

4: Will an upgrade to the latest version incur significant reconfiguration (more than 10% of the original configuration)?.

5: Is it difficult to find system integrators to help enhance or maintain your current version?.

6: Has the product support on your current version expired, or is it about to?.

7: Is your system becoming more expensive to maintain?.

8: Was the last service pack or update for your software available more than 12 months ago?.

9: Is your control system at risk from attacks by viruses?.

10: Is it difficult to integrate you control system with other business systems?.

If you answered yes to questions 8 and 10, then it is imperative that you replace your systems immediately, as their hidden costs may cause long-term competitive damage.

If you answered yes to 5 and 7, the best course of action is to speak with your current vendor about upgrade options.

A score of 3-4 means your control system is performing adequately.

Finally, a score of 1-2 testifies that your control system is in good order.

For companies in the top-scoring bracket with obsolete legacy systems, there are a number of options.

One option is to do nothing.

This option is not really viable since it will impair the company's ability to compete as costs continue to mount and productivity is lost.

Another option is to upgrade with the existing vendor.

Maintaining an up-to-date control system prevents it from becoming a legacy system that no longer provides business benefits.

Naturally, it is much easier to upgrade when a control system vendor provides a seamless upgrade path to its latest product release.

Replacing the present legacy system entirely is also an option.

This may be expensive because software is only a fraction of the overall cost of a new HMI/Scada system.

Developing a new configuration can take months and incur significant downtime.

However, if your current provider does not have a seamless upgrade path, you may want to consider this alternative to prevent future problems.

The final option is to automatically convert the existing legacy system to a completely new one.

Companies such as Citect, who specialise in the automation market, offer a conversion tool called Switch2Citect that dramatically reduces the time and expense involved with developing a new system.

Tools like Switch2Citect help companies easily change their existing Scada systems to ones that provide clear upgrade paths.

The conversion tool easily converts graphics and tag databases to a CitectScada system.

Configuration time of graphical displays is reduced from days to hours or even minutes.

More importantly, users will not be tied to a legacy system with prohibitive upgrades that will ultimately hurt their bottom line.