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 _______________________________________________________________________ This mailing list is neither sponsored nor endorsed by Invensys Process Systems (formerly The Foxboro Company). Use the info you obtain here at your own risks. Read http://www.thecassandraproject.org/disclaimer.html =20 foxboro mailing list: //www.freelists.org/list/foxboro to subscribe: = mailto:foxboro-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=3Djoin to unsubscribe: = mailto:foxboro-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=3Dleave =20 _______________________________________________________________________ This mailing list is neither sponsored nor endorsed by Invensys Process Systems (formerly The Foxboro Company). Use the info you obtain here at your own risks. Read http://www.thecassandraproject.org/disclaimer.html foxboro mailing list: //www.freelists.org/list/foxboro to subscribe: mailto:foxboro-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=join to unsubscribe: mailto:foxboro-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=leave