Life cycle challenges of process control systems

Abstract

The long life cycle of industrial process control systems presents many domain-specific challenges for operators and suppliers which are not addressed by existing IT solutions. Even if only remanufactured components are available for older control systems, many operators in the automation domain do not want to replace these in order to protect their investment. This is in contrast to the IT sector, where hardware and software are upgraded at frequent intervals. Even if a customer does want to migrate to a successor control system this often involves costly manual changes to the existing control code. This paper analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of different strategies for life cycle management using five case studies. Important insights are gained into how automation systems can be made more independent from the life cycle of their IT components.