Knowledge Center: Process Performance

Despite arguments concerning the use of wireless in the industrial environment, there is little doubt the technology is here to stay. Manufacturers recognize the potential of wireless systems to reduce costs and improve efficiency across their plant and business enterprise.

Executive SummaryA steel mill uses new Honeywell wireless instruments to obtain reliable measurements from locations that were impossible to measure using wired instruments. As a result they are able to speed up their melting operations and increase production. Next they decide to expand from wireless measurements to a wireless system that supports both measurements and several new applications. By building out a multi-purpose wireless network infrastructure they can now add or expand their measurements and applications with relative ease.

Honeywell’s OneWireless is a long term strategy by Honeywell to extend its leadership into the coming era of wireless process automation. The building blocks of the strategy are wireless sensing plus a growing suite of new applications. These applications exploit unique capabilities of wireless. All the solutions are supported by a single new wireless mesh network. Honeywell focuses on managing this technology portfolio and delivering it in whatever size and sequence fits the plans of individual manufacturers and plants.

The concepts behind OneWireless were developed and refined through Honeywell’s extensive contacts with its process manufacturing customers, and through testing and use of earlier Honeywell wireless products. These OneWireless components have a wide range of maturities. Honeywell’s wireless sensing products have been on the market for several years and are now offered in a 2nd generation. Other solution components such as location tracking are not a single technology solution, but rather a software platform that can incorporate a number of different wireless AutoID technologies.

The aspect of OneWireless automation that remains the same as wired systems is Honeywell’s view of its own role and value to its customers. Honeywell will continue to design and deliver process management solutions that exploit new and emerging technology. It will accept the role and the challenges of serving as a platform and system integrator. Since its customers demand long term support, this role becomes more challenging now that it includes the fast-moving world of wireless. Succeeding in this role is Honeywell’s primary objective for OneWireless.

Business Value from Wireless MeasurementNucor Steel’s operation in Tuscaloosa, Alabama produces a wide range of carbon, HSLA and pressure vessel steels. The company operates 2 furnaces with a capacity of 150 tons each. Their scrap melting furnace consumes 110MW of electricity and melt rate is further increased by supplemental firing of natural gas within the furnace.

Keeping instrumentation functional in such an environment has been an ongoing challenge, and the lack of adequate measurements can limit the unit’s ability to produce. Especially critical is the ability to measure temperature at various points on the outside shell of the furnace. These measurements indicate blowback to the side of the furnace and thus are needed to prevent damage to the furnace itself. Without this real-time measurement, the furnace’s internal heat release must be reduced, causing lost production. A full suite of wired instrumentation was designed and installed on the original furnace, but the operating conditions are such that these measurements were never reliable.

Instrumentation on the furnace shell is subject to intense heat, mechanical impact from steel scrap that falls outside the furnace, as well as occasional open flame. The instruments are protected in cooled enclosures surrounded by ceramic fiber blankets. But conduits from wired instruments are inevitably a weak point in the system. Protecting the conduit runs and wiring from the environment is simply impossible. In a very short time the measurements fail. Cable and conduit needs to be replaced, which cannot be done during normal production.

Wanting to solve this problem, Nucor participated in an early trial of Honeywell’s XYR 5000 wireless transmitters. As an initial survey, Nucor surveyed the area by moving one transmitter around and trying to find the locations where its wireless communication failed. They had trouble finding one. Eventually they found a spot where communication stopped, but this was done by moving the transmitter outside the building, inside a silo and behind a steel beam. Within the critical furnace area, there were no practical constraints on transmitter location. Wireless communication was not a problem, despite the interference from metal components and over 100,000 amperes of electric current applied to the furnace.

Installing wireless temperature transmitters around the furnace has vastly improved the reliability of these measurements. Besides the more reliable system, maintainability is also enhanced. The company reports they can replace any failed measurement in a few minutes, compared with hours for trouble-shooting and repair of wired systems.

The wireless instrument field trial was so successful that Nucor followed up by agreeing to an expanded field trial. This consisted of upgrading their measurements to the new Honeywell XYR 6000 transmitters and installing a OneWireless universal mesh network to support both the new measurements as well as other applications. The new mesh network covers the entire furnace area of the mill and enables a number of other process and operating improvements.

The XYR 6000 devices communicate directly with nodes on the OneWireless mesh infrastructure. Because this is a multi-use infrastructure, it supports both automation and enterprise applications. The infrastructure serves the wireless measurements but also supports mobile computers that now can carry the plant’s operator HMI anywhere in the melting operation. This capability is important during maintenance operations because it speeds them up and reduces interruptions of control room operators to support maintenance teams. Nucor reports that they “don’t use the portables on a 24/7 basis, but when we need them they are indispensible”. Nucor maintenance crews now also have access to the company’s maintenance management system through these mobile PCs. Yet neither the present HMI nor the maintenance management system at Nucor are supplied by Honeywell, though both have been enabled by the new OneWireless infrastructure.

Addition of a wireless infrastructure has also opened the door to other improvements at Nucor that will also be able to share the new network. With the network in place and providing coverage throughout the operation, new measurements can be installed without cable, conduit, or hardwired I/O, hugely reducing both cost and time to install. Nucor reports “the difference in the wiring, conduit, PLC I/O and time is unbelievable”. The company reports that they are “always working on their biggest hit projects” in terms of return on investment. The new infrastructure enables Nucor to be extremely flexible, since they now can simply add measurements anywhere there is coverage.

In the immediate future, Nucor is testing the Honeywell OneWireless location tracking capability to track when vehicles carrying molten slag enter areas normally occupied by personnel. The potential is to improve both operational efficiency and safety, again by utilizing their new network to serve other applications.

Nucor’s experience illustrates two important trends in the emerging market for wireless systems in manufacturing. First is the value of wireless measurement and the way wireless measurements can serve more reliably in applications where wiring brings not only added cost but high maintenance and unreliability. The second trend is the valuable “network effect” of a wireless network infrastructure. Nucor’s single new network supports all types of applications from closed-loop measurement, automation and HMI, to enterprise asset management. This wide range of applications allows Nucor the freedom to expand any of these applications as needed. While such networks are still uncommon in process manufacturing, the value of the flexibility, new applications, and the capital savings are now being recognized by many manufacturers who are eager to build such unified wireless networks, but recognize that their operation will inevitably become mission critical almost immediately.

What is OneWireless?OneWireless is the brand that Honeywell Process Solutions uses to encompass its entire wireless portfolio. There is a serious reason behind the use of the word “One”. It reflects Honeywell’s understanding of what its customers want from their future plant architecture. Honeywell has researched these ”voice of the customer” demands through its own extensive and intimate customer contacts (including 500 wireless customer sites) as well as through external sources such as ARC Advisory Group. Before the One- Wireless brand was introduced, Honeywell shared its conclusions at customer events and focus groups. Honeywell received a message that process manufacturers envisioned a wireless network as a single “wireless cloud”. However there are a number of critical requirements placed on of this network from an architectural standpoint. This wasn’t just any old cloud.

The requirement for a single infrastructure is at the center of Honeywell’s response. The concept is to provide an ultra-secure and ultra-reliable network infrastructure that supports all types of applications, including closed loop control. In Honeywell’s view the wireless network needs to be able to support future applications, such as closed-loop automation, as a normal service. Honeywell designed the network with that capability so that customers can install a single high performance network for monitoring applications with the flexibility to add more critical applications when and if they are ready. It is easier to design a network from the outset for critical tasks than to later try to force-fit them onto a network not designed to perform them.

There is one single network from the customer’s standpoint. But it has multiple characteristics. It will be used for multiple tasks. These include backhaul of sensor information, closedloop control, information, HMI, video, communication, and enterprise applications. These services will require multiple wireless technologies, which customers expect the network to be able to support. It also supports a number of different classes of service. This enables it to be used for a wide variety of automation tasks with different dynamics and flexible reporting rates. It can support multiple protocols, including the polyglot of existing industrial communications, so that existing investment does not have to be discarded. Customers want the network to be “open” so that it can support existing applications and standard TCP/IP communications.

Customers also need “one throat to choke”. Process manufacturing customers are unwilling to act as system or platform integrators for their future plants. They look to suppliers such as Honeywell to perform this function. This includes not just providing equipment and support services , but also managing the platform over the long term so that rapidly developing new technologies and applications can be quickly and inexpensively added.

They also look to their supplier to manage the embedded technology, so that their systems remain up to date and skirt around technological dead ends without causing undue discomfort. Automation suppliers will have to embrace the role of technology and platform integrators in order to satisfy these customer visions, but that is an area of Honeywell experience and one that the company readily accepts.

Why OneWireless?Honeywell said first what has now become a cliché, that the advent of wireless networking represents an “inflection point” in the development of automation. It is a case of a critically important and potentially valuable technology — yet a technology that is also rapidly developing and changing. How can the potential value be realized by process manufacturers who measure their asset lifetime in decades, not months or years?

It’s enlightening how analogous this situation is to the advent of the microprocessor over 30 years ago. Then, cheap microprocessors promised a world where “everything would have a computer inside” just as today “everything will have a wireless network”. Honeywell took the raw material of the microprocessor and used it to develop the first distributed control system (DCS), the TDC 2000. Honeywell rode this system and its successors to market leadership.

The DCS was a solution architecture that offered process manufacturers the opportunity to obtain performance advantages of digital microprocessor technology at low risk. Honeywell’s role was to use the technology as a raw material to create a product that would address process automation requirements and that their customers could manage. It was also a product that Honeywell could support and improve as technology developed. Thus Honeywell took their first step toward the role of a “platform integrator” (a concept that didn’t exist in those days!).

Technology has advanced incredibly since then, but what is the same about today’s situation is Honeywell’s conception of its role with respect to customers. Honeywell insists that real-time automation and process management is its central mission and views new technology as a means to that end. Technologies and the scope of automation systems have expanded, but Honeywell still views itself as the firm that develops and supports integrated automation solutions, regardless of the technology employed.

This means that Honeywell’s core business remains creating products that serve process management applications and delivering them to process manufacturers. The wireless “inflection point” will not change that mission at all. The core meaning of OneWireless is that Honeywell serves as the integrator and validator of its products and their underlying technology, regardless of whether the components are designed and built by Honeywell, Honeywell partners, or 3rd party suppliers. Honeywell is assuming the platform integration role and betting its reputation that it can deliver the “universal, simple and efficient” wireless systems that its customers say they need.

The OneWireless Universal Mesh NetworkHoneywell views the network as a critical resource for all types of tasks and a central piece of its wireless solution. The company partners with other firms to obtain critical networking technology, but brands and fully manages the OneWireless network solutions. In addition Honeywell partners with other firms to deploy valuable applications that use this wireless network, such as equipment health monitoring and location solutions.

Honeywell’s voice of the customer showed that scalability was a critical asset for their future systems, helping them to avoid constraints on their future operations. Their need for operational flexibility is critical. Future production, regulatory, and compliance requirements will certainly change. New and potentially valuable applications and technologies are always emerging. Having a highly scalable automation infrastructure allows manufacturers to respond quickly and effectively to these inevitable changes.

One important aspect of scalability is the support of multiple applications. Honeywell realized this as the OneWireless strategy emerged from a number of distinct wireless products that preceded it. The development of wireless sensors required some form of network infrastructure. Likewise Honeywell’s mobile operator products used a secure Wi-Fi wireless network. Location technologies also rely on wireless networks. New and existing applications were also jumping onto wireless networks and wireless sensor networks.

One excellent example of such a new application is the recently announced OneWireless Equipment Health Monitoring. This is an application combining specialized wireless sensing with sensor data analysis and integration with Honeywell’s Experion Asset Manager. Equipment condition monitoring applications have been moving to embrace wireless in order to reach a much larger fraction of critical assets at lower cost. Honeywell’s new solution can leverage the same OneWireless network that is also serving other OneWireless and 3rd party applications. From the customer’s perspective an infrastructure investment like this can yield significant value when it serves multiple applications and can be easily expanded and managed. Existing infrastructure can dramatically lower the incremental cost of new projects and initiatives.

Therefore the network itself is a central component of OneWireless, and it is present to some degree even in the smallest configurations. Honeywell’s strategy and objective is to deliver this network as part of its OneWireless solution to its manufacturing customers. This will be a single multi-purpose network for both Honeywell and 3rd party products and services. Honeywell’s design goals for this network included:

• Cost – The plant owner has not just the capital cost of the network, but the installation, operational, and maintenance costs. These include maintenance of critical power suppliers such as sensor batteries.

• Compatibility – The network should be operable in all regions of the world, should support multiple protocols and should be scalable to the tens of thousands of sensor nodes that might be found in future plants.

• Performance – The network must operate reliably in the industrial environment and perform similar to wired communications, including providing message delivery within schedule requirements.

• Security – The network needs to be protected against both deliberate attack and human error.

• Support for the Wireless Worker – It must support normal and emergency activities in the field during operation, commissioning, or equipment turnaround.

OneWireless Process Sensing: XYR TransmittersWireless sensing represents the “low hanging fruit” for wireless in process manufacturing. Up to 90% of the installed cost of measurements can be for cable conduit and related construction, which is largely unnecessary with wireless field devices. This immediate capital saving has made manufacturers eager to adopt new wireless field transmitters.

Honeywell was the first major automation supplier to introduce wireless transmitters. Honeywell XYR 5000 wireless transmitters first appeared at the Instrumentation, Systems, and Automation Society (ISA) Expo in October 2003. They were introduced to customers in January 2004. The backing of a leading supplier like Honeywell validated wireless transmitters in the view of end users, and other suppliers have followed Honeywell’s lead and introduced wireless transmitters during the last 3 years. Many more are certain to follow.

Honeywell has embraced the “mesh” network topology for its mission critical wireless infrastructure rather than for sensor networks. It sees wireless sensing as a natural evolution of sensing for closed-loop control and believes that a sensor-level mesh topology adds more uncertainty to the system than it is worth. With point-to-point signaling, the power consumption (and battery life) of each field device becomes accurately predictable. Changes in latency caused by routing changes to the network also are eliminated. Honeywell’s design includes a flexible set of antenna options to improve point-to-point reliability.

Honeywell has moved forward in the wireless sensing area as well. The XYR 6000 series was shown to customers in 2006 and released in 2007. XYR 6000 represents a complete new generation of wireless transmitters that incorporate significant improvements over the older products. Notable are improved and standard “D” sized batteries for long life and use of the worldwide 2.4 GHz band so that transmitter performance is the same around the globe.

One feature that reflects the degree to which Honeywell thought about the real-world concerns of customers is sensor network security. Besides having strong encryption, Honeywell has addressed the obscure security issue of “key management” in a way that is both effective and manageable by plant personnel.

The issue comes about because when a device wants to join a network it must obtain an initial encryption “key”. Transmitting the key to the device over the network can cause issues with unexpected (and unwelcome) devices joining the network either by accident or malicious design. Honeywell XYR 6000 devices receive their initial key only from a mobile computer that acts as an authentication device. The key is delivered through an infrared interface that works only within a few feet. Thus the key cannot be tampered with unless an authentication device comes within a few feet of the transmitter. This adds new layers of practical security. The plant perimeter security, control of the authentication device, and the remote location of the transmitter all add security and prevent intruders from joining the sensor network.

Location Tracking: The Honeywell Instant Location SystemIf wireless process sensing has become more mature and is now supporting 2nd generation products, then the wireless real-time location system (RTLS) is a technology at the other end of the maturity spectrum. All different types of RTLS technology have been tried, and the commercial companies pursuing wireless location tracking are venture-stage startups. Yet Honeywell customers were very interested in this capability. How can a relatively immature technology such as location tracking be incorporated into the OneWireless portfolio?

In its “voice of the customer” research Honeywell noted very different expectations concerning the accuracy, range, cost, and battery life of a location system and its components. Applications varied also. Clearly then, commercializing a single technical solution and trying to make it fit this wide variety of applications would not meet customer needs. What was the alternative? Honeywell’s strategy is to invest in and develop a location services software platform. This platform can be used by a wide variety of applications and can also gather information from many types of tags and tracking systems. The software platform is the core component of the Honeywell Instant Location System (HILS for short).

With respect to the hardware, HILS is not committed to a single technology but rather employs different technology solutions depending upon the application and customer requirements. HILS supports tracking tags that use GPS, Wi-Fi, Ultra-wideband radio, or Active RFID technology. The choice among these alternatives is made during the system engineering process. The application may dictate that tracking occur over a wide area or only in a small “choke point”. Update rates may vary from seconds to hours. There may be existing wireless networks that can serve the application, or it may require new infrastructure. Most important, the real-time location information needs to be integrated with other applications so that it can create business value for the end user.

By basing its solution on a software platform that works across multiple tagging and tracking technologies, Honeywell facilitates application integration, which is how the customer derives value from real-time tracking. This also enables HILS to adopt new and improved tagging and tracking technologies as they emerge – without disturbing the customer application. HILS takes an information and application-centric view. These location data streams represent a completely new class of realtime manufacturing information. This information can be used to improve safety (as in a mustering application) and can also enhance process operations by verifying that the appropriate areas are occupied or unoccupied during various process operational steps. The information-centric approach is what characterizes HILS and is the source of its value.

In summary, OneWireless is a long term strategy by Honeywell to extend its leadership into the coming era of wireless process automation. The building blocks of the strategy are wireless sensing, and wireless workers combined with a growing suite of new applications. These applications exploit unique capabilities of wireless, while integrating their existing wired counterparts. All these solution components are supported by a single new mission critical wireless mesh network. Honeywell’s strategy is to focus on managing this technology solutions portfolio and deliver it in whatever size and sequence fits the needs of individual manufacturers and plants.

-----------------------------------

For more information Please visit Honeywell website at www.honeywell.com/ps/sea