Life Cycle Cost Model for Distributed Control Systems

Abstract

The introduction of short-lived IT-related commercial-off-the-shelf (CotS) components into the domain of process automation has enabled a drastic decrease in Distributed Control Systems (DCS) acquisition cost. However, the high obsolescence rate of CotS components has drastically increased the number of required upgrades during its life cycle. It has become very difficult to compare investment options since a lot of costs moved from the initial acquisition to later stages. One answer to this problem is to use the life cycle cost (LCC) of a system as decision basis. LCC approaches are already in use in other domains, and in this article we present a cost taxonomy and calculation model that takes into account the peculiarities of the process automation domain.