Honeywell unveils Experion PKS Highly Integrated Virtual Environment (HIVE), a new approach to engineering and maintaining industrial control systems, according to the company. This is an evolution of the company’s flagship Experion Process Knowledge System (PKS).
Experion PKS HIVE uses Honeywell’s LEAP project execution principles, software and networking to unchain control applications from physical equipment, and controllers from physical IO. This enables control systems to be engineered and implemented in less time, at lower cost and risk and with simpler, modular builds, according to Honeywell. The offering also changes the way control systems are maintained over their lifecycle, shifting day-to-day management of servers to a centralized data center, where experts and established protocols mitigate cybersecurity risk, allowing plant engineers to focus more proactively on optimization of their control systems.
Experion PKS HIVE incorporates three elements – IT HIVE, IO HIVE and Control HIVE – which can be used individually or collectively, in tandem with customers’ existing systems and infrastructure:
• Experion PKS IT HIVE centralizes up to 80% of the IT infrastructure traditionally used in project engineering to lower project delivery and lifecycle costs, better leverage skills and drive consistent physical and cybersecurity management across an enterprise, according to Honeywell.
• Experion PKS IO HIVE provides flexible IO and control distribution enabling the control system to become a natural extension of process equipment and to facilitate modular and parallel project execution.
• Experion PKS Control HIVE applies control containers to provide flexibility and standardization of control hardware platform, control location and control engineering. With multiple physically controllers operating as part of a Experion PKS Control HIVE, control engineering is reportedly simplified through automated load balancing.
“In developing Experion PKS HIVE, Honeywell worked closely with customers across the chemical, refining and oil and gas industries,” says Jason Urso, chief technology officer, Honeywell Process Solutions. “Many of these organizations want a more efficient approach to control system engineering, yet one that can be adopted incrementally and used interchangeably with their existing systems and infrastructure. Experion PKS HIVE provides these benefits and is truly a distributed control as it applies and geographically distributes technology to where it is needed.”
Experion PKS HIVE shifts IO to the field and makes it fully accessible to any controller, taking individual physical controllers and distributing the load so that they appear as a single controller to eliminate complexity, according to Honeywell. The offering distributes IT compute from onsite to offsite.
For more information, visit: www.honeywellprocess.com
