Distributed control

system

A distributed control system (DCS) is a

computerised control system for a
process or plant usually with a large
number of control loops, in which
autonomous controllers are distributed
throughout the system, but there is central
operator supervisory control. This is in
contrast to systems that use centralized
controllers; either discrete controllers
located at a central control room or within
a central computer. The DCS concept
increases reliability and reduces
installation costs by localising control
functions near the process plant, with
remote monitoring and supervision.

Distributed control systems first emerged

in large, high value, safety critical process
industries, and were attractive because the
DCS manufacturer would supply both the
local control level and central supervisory
equipment as an integrated package, thus
reducing design integration risk. Today the
functionality of SCADA and DCS systems
are very similar, but DCS tends to be used
on large continuous process plants where
high reliability and security is important,
and the control room is not geographically
remote.

Structure

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 processor fails, it will only affect one
section of the plant process, as opposed
to a failure of a central computer which
would affect the whole process. This
distribution of computing power local to
the field Input/Output (I/O) connection
racks also ensures fast controller
processing times by removing possible
network and central processing delays.

The accompanying diagram is a general

model which shows functional
manufacturing levels using computerised
control.

Referring to the diagram;

Level 0 contains the field devices such

as flow and temperature sensors, and
final control elements, such as control
valves
Level 1 contains the industrialised
Input/Output (I/O) modules, and their
associated distributed electronic
processors.
Level 2 contains the supervisory
computers, which collect information
from processor nodes on the system,
 and provide the operator control
screens.
Level 3 is the production control level,
which does not directly control the
process, but is concerned with
monitoring production and monitoring
targets
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 system from a
single manufacturer.
Levels 3 and 4 are not strictly process
control in the traditional sense, but where
production control and scheduling takes
place.

Technical points

Example of a continuous flow control loop. Signalling

is by industry standard 4–20 mA current loops, and a

"smart" valve positioner ensures the control valve

operates correctly.
The processor nodes and operator
graphical displays are connected over
proprietary or industry standard networks,
and network reliability is increased by dual
redundancy cabling over diverse routes.
This distributed topology also reduces the
amount of field cabling by siting the I/O
modules and their associated processors
close to the process plant.

The processors receive information from

input modules, process the information
and decide control actions to be signalled
by the output modules. The field inputs
and outputs can be analog signals e.g. 4–
20 mA DC current loop or 2 state signals
that switch either "on" or "off", such as
relay contacts or a semiconductor switch.

DCSs are connected to sensors and

actuators and use setpoint control to
control the flow of material through the
plant. A typical application is a PID
controller fed by a flow meter and using a
control valve as the final control element.
The DCS sends the setpoint required by
the process to the controller which
instructs a valve to operate so that the
process reaches and stays at the desired
setpoint. (see 4–20 mA schematic for
example).
Large oil refineries and chemical plants
have several thousand I/O points and
employ very large DCS. Processes are not
limited to fluidic flow through pipes,
however, and can also include things like
paper machines and their associated
quality controls, variable speed drives and
motor control centers, cement kilns,
mining operations, ore processing
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 field
signalling standard, modern DCS systems
can also support fieldbus digital protocols,
such as Foundation Fieldbus, profibus,
HART, Modbus, PC Link etc., and other
digital communication protocols such as
modbus.

Modern DCSs also support neural

networks and fuzzy logic applications.
Recent research focuses on the synthesis
of optimal distributed controllers, which
optimizes a certain H-infinity or the H 2
control criterion.[1][2]

Typical applications
Distributed control systems (DCS) are
dedicated systems used in manufacturing
processes that are continuous or batch-
oriented.

Processes where a DCS might be used

include:

Chemical plants
Petrochemical (oil) and refineries
Pulp and Paper Mills (see also: quality
control system QCS)
Boiler controls and power plant systems
Nuclear power plants
Environmental control systems
 Water management systems
Water treatment plants
Sewage treatment plants
Food and food processing
Agro chemical and fertilizer
Metal and mines
Automobile manufacturing
Metallurgical process plants
Pharmaceutical manufacturing
Sugar refining plants
Agriculture Applications

History
A pre-DCS era central control room. Whilst the
controls are centralised in one place, they are still
discrete and not integrated into one system.

A DCS control room where plant information and

controls are displayed on computer graphics screens.
The operators are seated as they can view and
control any part of the process from their screens,
whilst retaining a plant overview.

Evolution of process control

operations

Process control of large industrial plants

has evolved through many stages. Initially,
control would be from panels local to the
process plant. However this required a
large manpower resource to attend to
these dispersed panels, and there was no
overall view of the process. The next
logical development was the transmission
of all plant measurements to a
permanently-manned central control room.
Effectively this was the centralisation of all
the localised panels, with the advantages
of lower manning levels and easier
overview of the process. Often the
controllers were behind the control room
panels, and all automatic and manual
control outputs were transmitted back to
plant. However, whilst providing a central
control focus, this arrangement was
inflexible as each control loop had its own
controller hardware, and continual
operator movement within the control
room was required to view different parts
of the process.

With the coming of electronic processors

and graphic displays it became possible to
replace these discrete controllers with
computer-based algorithms, hosted on a
network of input/output racks with their
own control processors. These could be
distributed around plant, and
communicate with the graphic display in
the control room or rooms. The distributed
control system was born.

The introduction of DCSs allowed easy

interconnection and re-configuration of
plant controls such as cascaded loops and
interlocks, and easy interfacing with other
production computer systems. It enabled
sophisticated alarm handling, introduced
automatic event logging, removed the
need for physical records such as chart
recorders, allowed the control racks to be
networked and thereby located locally to
plant to reduce cabling runs, and provided
high level overviews of plant status and
production levels.

Origins

Early minicomputers were used in the

control of industrial processes since the
beginning of the 1960s. The IBM 1800, for
example, was an early computer that had
input/output hardware to gather process
signals in a plant for conversion from field
contact levels (for digital points) and
analog signals to the digital domain.
The first industrial control computer
system was built 1959 at the Texaco Port
Arthur, Texas, refinery with an RW-300 of
the Ramo-Wooldridge Company.[3]

In 1975, both Honeywell and Japanese

electrical engineering firm Yokogawa
introduced their own independently
produced DCS's - TDC 2000 and CENTUM
systems, respectively. US-based Bristol
also introduced their UCS 3000 universal
controller in 1975. In 1978 Valmet
introduced their own DCS system called
Damatic (latest generation named Valmet
DNA[4]). In 1980, Bailey (now part of
ABB[5]) introduced the NETWORK 90
system, Fisher Controls (now part of
Emerson Electric) introduced the PROVoX
system, Fischer & Porter Company (now
also part of ABB[6]) introduced DCI-4000
(DCI stands for Distributed Control
Instrumentation).

The DCS largely came about due to the

increased availability of microcomputers
and the proliferation of microprocessors in
the world of process control. Computers
had already been applied to process
automation 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 1010 system, Foxboro the
FOX1 system, Fisher Controls the DC2
system and Bailey Controls the 1055
systems. All of these were DDC
applications implemented within
minicomputers (DEC PDP-11, Varian Data
Machines, MODCOMP etc.) and connected
to proprietary Input/Output hardware.
Sophisticated (for the time) continuous as
well as batch control was implemented in
this way. A more conservative approach
was setpoint control, where process
computers supervised clusters of analog
process controllers. A workstation
provided visibility into the process using
text and crude character graphics.
Availability of a fully functional graphical
user interface was a way away.

Development

Central to the DCS model was the

inclusion of control function blocks.
Function blocks evolved from early, more
primitive DDC concepts of "Table Driven"
software. One of the first embodiments of
object-oriented software, function blocks
were self-contained "blocks" of code that
emulated analog hardware control
components and performed tasks that
were essential to process 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
technologies such as Foundation
Fieldbus[7] today.

Midac Systems, of Sydney, Australia,

developed an objected-oriented distributed
direct digital control system in 1982. The
central system ran 11 microprocessors
sharing tasks and common memory and
connected to a serial communication
network of distributed controllers each
running two Z80s. The system was
installed at the University of Melbourne.
Digital communication between
distributed controllers, workstations and
other computing elements (peer to peer
access) was one of the primary
advantages of the DCS. Attention was duly
focused on the networks, which provided
the all-important lines of communication
that, for process applications, had to
incorporate specific functions 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
necessary when information technology
moved into process automation and IEEE
802.3 rather than IEEE 802.4 prevailed as
the control LAN.

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
Australian business Midac in 1981–82
using R-Tec Australian 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 microprocessors,
while the front end ran eleven Z80s in a
parallel processing configuration 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 first 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 technology 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 first instances of object
management and global data access
technology. The 1980s also witnessed the
first PLCs integrated into the DCS
infrastructure. Plant-wide historians also
emerged to capitalize on the extended
reach of automation systems. The first
DCS supplier to adopt UNIX and Ethernet
networking technologies was Foxboro,
who introduced the I/A Series[8] system in
1987.

The application-centric era of

the 1990s

The drive toward openness in the 1980s

gained momentum through the 1990s with
the increased adoption of commercial off-
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 applications remains dominated by
real time commercial variants of UNIX or
proprietary operating systems, everything
above real-time control has made the
transition to Windows.

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 technology also began to make its
mark in automation and the world, with
most DCS HMI supporting Internet
connectivity. The 1990s were also known
for the "Fieldbus Wars", where rival
organizations competed to define what
would become the IEC fieldbus standard
for digital communication with field
instrumentation instead of 4–20 milliamp
analog communications. The first fieldbus
installations occurred in the 1990s.
Towards the end of the decade, the
technology began to develop significant
momentum, with the market consolidated
around Ethernet I/P, Foundation Fieldbus
and Profibus PA for process automation
applications. Some suppliers built new
systems from the ground up to maximize
functionality with fieldbus, 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
system, Siemens with the SPPA-T3000[11]
or Simatic PCS 7,[12] Forbes Marshall[13]
with the Microcon+ control system and
Azbil Corporation[14] with the Harmonas-
DEO system. Fieldbus technics have been
used to integrate machine, drives, quality
and condition monitoring applications 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
prodigious amounts of this hardware,
most of it manufactured from the bottom
up by DCS suppliers. Standard computer
components from manufacturers such as
Intel and Motorola, however, made it cost
prohibitive for DCS suppliers to continue
making their own components,
workstations, and networking hardware.

As the suppliers made the transition to

COTS components, they also discovered
that the hardware market was shrinking
fast. COTS not only resulted in lower
manufacturing costs for the supplier, but
also steadily decreasing prices for the end
users, who were also becoming
increasingly vocal over what they
perceived to be unduly high hardware
costs. Some suppliers that were previously
stronger in the PLC business, such as
Rockwell Automation and Siemens, were
able to leverage their expertise in
manufacturing control hardware to enter
the DCS marketplace with cost effective
offerings, 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 solution—
named "Process Automation System"
(PAS). The gaps among the various
systems remain at the areas such as: the
database integrity, pre-engineering
functionality, system maturity,
communication transparency and
reliability. While it is expected the cost
ratio is relatively the same (the more
powerful the systems are, the more
expensive they will be), the reality of the
automation business is often operating
strategically case by case. The current
next evolution step is called Collaborative
Process Automation Systems.

To compound the issue, suppliers were

also realizing that the hardware market
was becoming saturated. The life cycle of
hardware components such as I/O and
wiring is also typically in the range of 15 to
over 20 years, making for a challenging
replacement market. Many of the older
systems that were installed in the 1970s
and 1980s are still in use today, and there
is a considerable installed base of
systems in the market that are
approaching the end of their useful life.
Developed industrial economies in North
America, Europe, and Japan already had
many thousands of DCSs installed, and
with few if any new plants being built, the
market for new hardware was shifting
rapidly to smaller, albeit faster growing
regions such as China, Latin America, and
Eastern Europe.

Because of the shrinking hardware

business, suppliers began 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 offered by
suppliers expanded considerably in the
'90s to include areas such as production
management, model-based control, real-
time optimization, plant asset
management (PAM), Real-time
performance management (RPM) tools,
alarm management, and many others. To
obtain the true value from these
applications, however, often requires a
considerable service content, which the
suppliers also provide.

Modern systems (2010

onwards)
The latest developments in DCS include
the following new technologies:

1. Wireless systems and protocols

2. Remote transmission, logging and data
historian
3. Mobile interfaces and controls
4. Embedded web-servers

Increasingly, and ironically, DCS are

becoming centralised at plant level, with
the ability to log into the remote
equipment. This enables operator to
control both at enterprise level ( macro )
and at the equipment level (micro) both
within and outside the plant as physical
location due to interconnectivity primarily
due to wireless and remote access has
shrunk.

As wireless protocols are developed and

refined, DCS increasingly includes wireless
communication. DCS controllers are now
often equipped with embedded servers
and provide on-the-go web access.
Whether DCS will lead IIOT or borrow key
elements from remains to be established.

Many vendors provide the option of a

mobile HMI, ready for both Android and
iOS. With these interfaces, the threat of
security breaches and possible damage to
plant and process are now very real.

See also
Annunciator panel
Building automation
EPICS
First-out alarm
Industrial control system
Industrial safety system
Safety instrumented system (SIS)
TANGO

References
1. D'Andrea, Raffaello (9 September 2003).
"Distributed Control Design for Spatially
Interconnected Systems". IEEE
Transactions on Automatic Control.
doi:10.1109/tac.2003.816954 .
2. Massiaoni, Paolo (1 January 2009).
"Distributed Control for Identical
Dynamically Coupled Systems: A
Decomposition Approach". IEEE
Transactions on Automatic Control.
doi:10.1109/tac.2008.2009574 .
3. Stout, T. M.; Williams, T. J. (1995).
"Pioneering Work in the Field of Computer
Process Control". IEEE Annals of the
History of Computing. 17 (1): 6–18.
doi:10.1109/85.366507 .
4. [1] Valmet DNA
5. [2] INFI 90
6. [3] DCI-4000
7. [4] Foundation Fieldbus
8. [5] Foxboro I/A Series Distributed
Control System
9. "ABB System 800xA - process, electrical,
safety, telecoms in one system" .
www.abb.com.
10. [6] Emerson Process Management
11. [7] SPPA-T3000
12. "Archived copy" . Archived from the
original on 2007-03-29. Retrieved
2007-03-29. Simatic PCS 7
13. [8] Forbes Marshall
14. [9] Azbil Corporation

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