Yokogawa Electric Corporation announces that it will release an upgrade of the Collaborative Information Server (CI Server), a product in the OpreX™ Control and Safety System family. Accordingly, it will enable more robust alarm management, improved access to maintenance information, and expanded support for international communications standards.

This solution will bring together large volumes of data from various plant equipment and systems. Thus, enabling optimized management of production activities across an entire enterprise, and providing the environment needed to remotely monitor and control operations from any location and make swift decisions.

Development Background

Manufacturing plants employ many different types of equipment and devices. Moreover, the collection of their data plays an essential role in the swift detection and response to abnormalities in plant operations and routine maintenance.

Thus, it is essential to establish connections with all the different plant systems, equipment, and devices. To obtain the data needed to correctly understand what is happening in a plant and efficiently manage its operations.

Yokogawa came out with the first release of the CI Server in 2021. By integrating the handling of all kinds of data from plant equipment, devices, and systems, this solution facilitates the optimized management of production activities across an entire enterprise. With this latest upgrade to CI Server, the company has introduced new functions that enhance its connectivity with plant systems, equipment, and devices. Hence, enable the integrated management of alarms and the use of field device data for such purposes as routine maintenance.

Main Features

1. OPC UA A&C message reception function
   CI Server now supports the client function of OPC Unified Architecture Alarms & Conditions (UA A&C). This enables CI Server to receive alarms, system state information, and other kinds of data safely and securely.
2. CENTUM™ VP and ProSafe-RS alarm receiving function through V net
   In addition, for purpose of the monitoring of plant operations, CI Server can now directly receive CENTUM VP and ProSafe-RS alarms through V net^*. With the addition of this function, linkage with Yokogawa’s CENTUM VP distributed control system and ProSafe-RS safety instrumented system has been enhanced.
3. Linkage with Plant Resource Manager (PRM)
   CI Server can now link with Yokogawa’s PRM (R4.06 or later) and is thus able to handle and provide to higher-level systems all the information that is managed using this software package. By linking with data from multiple application programs, CI Server enables the comprehensive monitoring of field device status information, parameters, and other kinds of data.

*V net is a control network developed by Yokogawa that offers both high reliability and responsiveness. It complies with the IEC61784-2 international communication standard for the process industries.