Our business principles are based on providing state-of-the-art “mother tools” and infrastructure for industry, and on mobilising our advantages in measurement, control and IT as core technologies. We achieve the latter by strengthening our accumulated competitive edge and through alliances with academic and/or industrial institutions.
Reliability, compatibility with existing systems, interoperability, future growth paths and a stable supply of products over an extended period of time form the heart of Yokogawa’s corporate DNA.
Key issues for future IA market
THE manufacturing sector faces five major challenges, from the viewpoint both of users and suppliers of industrial automation.
Protecting health, safety and the environment is the first priority. The fundamental aspects of industrial automation products - such as reliability, ease of engineering and long-term supply - continue to play a key role in helping to meet regulatory and social requirements. Essential elements include safeguarding systems, predictive maintenance and intelligent operation assistance.
The second challenge is realising green and sustainable manufacturing. This means establishing an innovative production system to maximise energy efficiency and minimise waste, to prevent global warming. As chemical companies try to add more value through downstream integration of their value chain, they focus on final products. Therefore, we are seeing greater variety in small-quantity production. However, current technologies are not environmentally-friendly enough.
The third issue is implementing flexible and agile manufacturing to accommodate market and business changes. Whether it relates to a production location or process, production information integration or the final product itself, constant change is becoming common rather than the exception in the severely competitive business environment. For example, waste during transition at recipe changes is becoming a big issue because of the frequent recipe switches based on market demand. To keep up with the accelerating speed of change, the conventional “Big Bang” approach that requires the whole-scale reengineering of a production system is no longer practical. Manufacturers have to realise a more incremental approach that allows flexible changes to existing production systems. Also, expandable interface architecture - enabling the ongoing integration of newly developed and/or customer-developed functions - becomes important.
The fourth challenge is to achieve a smooth succession of expertise and experience. In developed nations, experienced operators and engineers are starting to retire with their precious know-how. On the other hand, in developing nations, rapid economic growth is causing a shortage of qualified operators and engineers. To overcome this human resource constraint, we have to find solutions that help transfer and utilise human expertise and experiences efficiently and effectively. One solution is to strengthen the automated and autonomous functions of field devices and control systems, and thus reduce labour-intensive operations. Another solution is to effectively use expertise and share best practice by knowledge management.
The fifth challenge is life cycle asset management, that is to say, sustaining the freshness of a system, even after 10 years. Since control systems are typically used for 10 years plus, both the user and supplier must make sure that: the delivered system adopts technologies that stay mainstream and vivid 10 years down the road, and that the system incorporates expandable architecture that enables ongoing adaptation to new requirements. The key point is that the manufacturing system has to retain the customer’s knowledge embedded in the system while providing the latest system environment.
Innovation initiatives
RESPONDING to these challenges, Yokogawa research and development is launching six initiatives, using the three transversal (crossing multiple disciplines) technologies: measuring/manipulating micro quantities technology, manipulating/ubiquitous computing technology and measuring/manipulating optics technology.
The first four initiatives are related to industrial automation, while the last two are for new business developments outside this domain.
FIELD WIRING
Here, the next generation Internet protocol IPv6 and wireless communications will play the major role.
IPv6, the new standard for the Internet’s addressing system, is gaining recognition and will change the features of communication networks everywhere, including industrial automation. Compared with the current IPv4 system, IPv6 provides practically unlimited addressing capacity. The IPv4’s addressing capacity is up to four billion, which is insufficient to provide an IP address to all humans on Earth (the world population is now 6.5 billion plus). IPv6 allows a unique IP address to be assigned to all intelligent devices. Your refrigerator, TV, etc. will have their IP addresses and communicate with a network. A similar situation will apply to field instruments and sensors of industrial automation. IPv6 allows the user to access instruments and sensors by an IP address, enabling instruments and sensors to send their messages over networks. The plug-and-play and security futures of IPv6 give many benefits to industrial automation systems.
In production processes, field wiring for sensors has traditionally provided highly reliable signal transmission and intrinsic safety features. But new challenges demand a more flexible usage of a variety of signals from multiple devices. We see Ethernet/IPv6 as the only protocol candidate for future network-based production systems able to satisfy this need. We have been highly involved, from early on, in IPv6 standardisation activities because we believe the fundamental importance of this technology for next generation open networks. IPv6 offers more advanced encryption, is more secure against network intrusion, and supports easy-to-configure connectivity to a wider variety of devices.
Based on this, we have been preparing IPv6-based wiring systems for production field applications. We are working on how to apply IPv6 for critical applications that require dependability, security, real-time response, scalability, low power consumption, intrinsic safety, redundant wiring topology, etc. Development includes a dedicated IPv6 chip for low-power field devices.
We are also working on wireless communication focused on field use, based on the IEEE802.15.4/ZigBee standard, which is suitable for low-power communications. Wireless is the absolute solution for topology-free wiring. We are now developing wireless temporal sensors that can be easily installed and monitor data without additional wiring. We believe this type of sensor helps plant asset analysis and start-up/shutdown.
Also, we are working on MIMO (Multi-Input-Multi-Output) technology and the ISA SP100 standard to realise wireless field sensors.
Yokogawa will continue to promote the deployment of Fieldbus Foundation, which has become the de facto fieldbus standard. We will provide a compatible environment for Foundation fieldbus applications on the IPv6 network layer, that is, FF over IPv6.
CHEMICAL PRODUCTION
We are developing a new chemical synthesis system, the so-called micro-reactor technology, which realises safe and environmentally friendly small-quantity production.
Micro reactor technology, which enables a new chemical synthesis by bringing chemical reactions inside micro-fluid channels, is expected to lead to significant innovation in the chemical industry’s manufacturing process.
The key technology behind this is MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems), which Yokogawa has mastered as a pioneer. All chemical processing is performed in the micro-channel on the silicon. Because of the micro size, the micro-fluid channels perform very closely to the ideal chemical reaction, compared with conventional chemical plants. As a result, very efficient and safe chemical processing is materialised by micro reactors.
In collaboration with a chemical company, we are developing an onsite gas generator using an electro-chemical micro reactor. This prototype technology for the future electric power and energy station uses a fuel cell. This gas generator will realise an “ubiquitous production system”, meaning that the necessary amount of products can be produced at any time at the site of usage.
In another collaboration, we are developing a catalyst evaluation system by micro reactors that enable high-speed screening.
CONTROL AND OPERATION
Yokogawa is pioneering real-time tracking simulation technology for advanced operator support, which will lead to safe and efficient plant operation.
The tracking simulator runs a plant model in a computer, simultaneously feeding real plant information to the model on a real-time basis. The simulator gradually adjusts the model parameters in order to reduce the differences between the measured values from the real plant and the calculated values from the tracking simulator. This enables the user to estimate intermediate variables that cannot be measured directly, and may enable the user to perform endpoint control.
The tracking simulator can also detect unintended changes or abnormalities in systems by comparing differences between the projected value by the process model and actual measurement values. This feature allows the operator to prevent sudden process changes or abnormalities beforehand.
The ultimate goal here is to implement model-based plant operations. In other words, it aims to transform the instrumentation-based operation to a more abstract operation. Also, it leads to a “transparent operation”, using this abstract scheme to enable the remote operation of multiple plants of similar nature and to promote the re-use of common operation know-how.
FIELD UBIQUITOUS INITIATIVE
Today’s production system is expected to expand beyond a simple manufacturing system to perform various additional requirements such as environmental protection, traceability and energy conservation. Yokogawa proposes a framework called “Field Overlay Architecture”, in which various issue-solving systems are overlaid onto existing systems. In place of dedicated systems, the networked-based system, which has interconnectivity and flexibility, realises the field computing environment, which allows the user to grow production systems based on the various additional requirements. Field Overlay Architecture is achieved by combining two mechanisms, namely a common computing platform and a mechanism to overlay specific object focused systems on existing systems.
LIFE SCIENCES
Targeting “personalised medical treatment”, we are pioneering the next-generation DNA analysing system which consists of an integrated DNA cartridge and a DNA analyser.
PHOTONIC DEVICES
Yokogawa has decided to enter the ultra high-speed optical communications infrastructure market. Using our world-class, ultra-high-speed compound semiconductor technology, Yokogawa has been putting its effort to establish a “photonic device innovation”. Now, success is in sight. We have developed various optical communication modules and subsystems for 10 Gbps and 40 Gbps. These products have been embedded in ultra high-speed logic circuits of the backbone network equipment as well as in Yokogawa measurement instruments.
Next generation optical packet router
IN order to accelerate the next generation optical packet networking, which is expected to be in place by 2015, Yokogawa has succeeded in developing an optical switch that realises two-nanosecond switching.
The highest switching speed of our competitor is around two milliseconds. Imagine that: two-nanosecond switching means the total Japanese population (130 million) receives a relay baton four times each second, whereas two milliseconds switching means only once every three days.
Yokogawa is the one and only supplier of ultra high speed optical packet switch and related systems.