“Simplify, simplify, simplify!” Henry David Thoreau wrote those words in his 1854 memoir “Walden” – although he was talking about simple living in natural surroundings, you can apply the mantra to many things in life. Granted, his head would probably spin at the thought of virtualization, but simplification is the wave of the future.
According to the article “Understand The Real Benefits of Virtualization,” chemical firms must simplify what traditionally has been a long and expensive automation design process to get plants up and running quickly. Virtualization provides significant advantages for deploying process control systems at chemical plants.
Indeed, rising hardware costs, deployments of manufacturing execution systems, enterprise resource planning software and human/machine interfaces require dedicated server hardware that ends up being under-utilized. But virtualized control system infrastructure can be run on multi-purpose hardware that supports greater variety and functionality with fewer but more versatile components.
Some additional benefits of using a virtualized solution: increased security and reliability, longer hardware lifecycle, reduced operating costs, workspace mobility and lower energy consumption.
In order to help you along your virtualization journey, the editors of Chemical Processing and our sister publication Pharmaceutical Manufacturing, as well as experts at Pepperl+Fuchs and Honeywell Process Solutions, have put together a special report: The Time Is Right For Virtualization. In this report, we explore how virtualization can provide significant advantages for deploying process control systems at chemical and pharmaceutical plants.