Re: [foxboro] Can't figure out a way to justify it.

  • From: nick.maher@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • To: foxboro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2005 11:07:07 -0500

It is an excellent point of turnarounds effecting the upgrade strategy, and
making for a large upgrade across plants due to the limited opportunity
outside of this.

The ability of on-line upgrades would allow this cost to be spread across
years in a proactive approach and also when a particular Manager/Business
unit felt unhappy about the level of spares to support systems reactively,
they could make a decision on a shorter time horizon.

For plants I work on, we are having to make decisions on designs maybe two
years before a three year turnaround schedule, so making a 5 year planning
horizon, and decisions on the technology to employ. 

If I were in Foxboro's shoes, I would be thinking that large scale upgrades
are a good revenue generator, and lets face it, many other control systems
manufacturers are embracing shorter life cycles and upgrades maybe through
windows. So the risk is similar to other systems. 

I'm sure many managers would look at look at the risks of moving to another
control system vendor, and say is it any different.........possibly not, as
many are having shorter life cycles for there equipment. 

BUT, if I were a control systems Vendor, I would be thinking a competitive
advatnage would be the ability to deal with these upgrades in a online
manner. Managers/Business units are making decisions on time horizons of
maybe 5 years, so  may be once bitten twice shy. I'm quite sure Foxboro are
addressing these issues with the new equipment of on-line upgrades, but I
just hope it is seamless and on-line in the future, otherwise the decision
to migrate to alternative platforms may be enhanced.


-----Original Message-----
From: foxboro-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:foxboro-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Airhart, Chad M.
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2005 3:02 PM
To: foxboro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [foxboro] Can't figure out a way to justify it.


We have been dealing with this issue for the past year trying to justify
an upgrade.  One of the problems is the upgrades are tied to turnarounds
due to the CP reboot required.  In our case we have a 2006 turnaround
and by all of our analyses we are not in that bad a shape reliability
wise compared to some of the other plants in the company.  But in 2011
when our next turnaround is I think we will probably be in pretty bad
shape.  According to the data we could gather on our system our FBM's
are our most critical equipment reliability-wise since there can be an
economic impact from a failure.  Workstations can be replaced without
shutting down the plant typically and CP's are redundant.  Our
calculations showed we can expect an average of about one plant outage
per two years, one day in duration.  This failure rate would not justify
an upgrade and none of our parts are out of lifetime yet.  If I would be
able to request one thing as an improvement it would be reliable online
upgrades.  That way we could spread the cost of an upgrade over multiple
years and do it a piece at a time. =20

With respect to Brad's message we looked at that also as our corporate
direction is the same which is to migrate to FI***R.  Economically doing
that is not feasible since most other vendors don't have a migration
path for I/O like Foxboro does.  If you have to replace all of the I/O
at once the project gets very expensive.  If you stay with Foxboro and
just upgrade the core of the system you can migrate I/O over time.  It
helps spread the cost some at least.  In our case the cost was less than
half and we could spread it further.

FYI our system is at 6.3, 2-AW51C's w/daughterboards, 4-WP51B1's,
4-CP30FT pairs and 1-CP40BFT pair, 2-Modbus gateways, 1-AB Station, and
1-ACM pair.

Chad M. Airhart
Senior Engineer (Instrument, Electrical and Control Sys)
Lyondell Chemical Co.                             Victoria Plant
Ph. (361)572-2568
Fx. (361)572-2541
Cell. (361)935-3230

-----Original Message-----
From: foxboro-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:foxboro-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of brad.s.wilson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wednesday, January 12, 2005 8:00 AM
To: foxboro@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [foxboro] Can't figure out a way to justify it.

My two cents ... our corporate policy (as I read it) seems to be toward
a
common platform in order to take advantage of shared services.  As long
as
we're repairing, replacing or upgrading individual pieces, the cost
pretty
much falls "under the radar".  I expect that as soon as I put in a
project
with a price tag that triggers a higher level review, they will push
VERY
hard to replace our I/A with H******** (which has a huge majority in the
installed base corporate-wide).

That said, I will continue to maintain my 51B/WP30/100 series for as
long
as I can, upgrading individual components where necessary, and trying to
avoid the radar.

Brad Wilson
ExxonMobil Chemical Co
Edison Synthetics Plant
732-321-6115
732-321-6177 fax
Brad.S.Wilson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

=20
=20
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