Ease Migration from Legacy Systems to a Modern DCS

Automation control migrations are sometimes needed to maintain competitiveness. For insights about handling migrations from legacy systems to a modern distributed control system (DCS), The Journal Executive Editor, Theresa Houck, talked with Nick Kristan, Process Solutions Manager, and Scott Hayes, DCSNext Portfolio Manager, both at Rockwell Automation. In this podcast, you’ll learn about a repeatable, step-by-step process that makes sure nothing is missed when migrating to a modern DCS.

Q: Why is DCS migration an important topic for your users?

Nick: Much of the DCS North American market we serve has platforms dating back as far as the 1980s. We see this across chemicals, life sciences, refining — really any major process industry. Over the lifespan of those platforms, technology has advanced significantly. When the key platform that’s responsible for whether you make or lose money as a business is significantly outdated, it leads to problems, and that regularly brings us to this discussion with process users who are just trying to get more productivity, safety and efficiency out of their platform.

Q: With that in mind, when you’re working with your customers, what do you see driving their investments?

Nick: The most common factor is obsolete or difficult-to-acquire components for the legacy system. That obviously leads to a major gap in support for their platform, which ultimately can lead to unnecessary downtime or just increased costs in general.

We also see a general lack of connectivity to other systems throughout the facility, whether it’s the MES, the lab management system, or any newer technology installed since their DCS platform was initially put in. And that affects the user’s ability to access and do as much as they can with key production data, and truly get meaning out of that information to make decisions.

Another very common factor that’s accelerating every day is the general awareness of cybersecurity vulnerabilities. This touches the DCS and the rest of the plant.

Q: You’ve helped a lot of process users migrate to their modern DCS platforms. What is your approach?

Scott: We have a repeatable process where we help the user move step by step from the project justification all the way through migrating to a new, modern DCS, and the support afterwards. In that process, we ensure that nothing is missed.

We do this because, if you’re an operator or a process engineer in a plant, migrating your whole control system is a once- or maybe twice-in-a-lifetime experience. But we do these every day. Based on doing these migrations over and over again, we built a process including toolkits and checklists to make sure it's done efficiently, and we do just enough engineering to minimize the risk along the way.

We didn’t make up this framework. It’s based on front-end loading (FEL), and the goals of that process are to make sure you successfully navigate your corporate funding tollgates and reduce the risk along the way.