ABB’s ‘Evolution for Life’ helps oil & gas companies extend life and performance of their automation systems.

ABB, the global automation company, claims that through its ‘Evolution for life’ programme oil and gas companies can maintain their process control systems at peak performance without the major investment, disruption or risk associated with complete system replacements In an ideal world companies that want to get the most from their production equipment would upgrade their plant regularly. In reality, the level of investment, disruption and potential teething problems caused by such a fundamental approach can make it impractical.

‘Evolution for Life’ is a lifecycle support strategy for the service, maintenance and continuous enhancement of process automation systems in the oil and gas industries. It provides a clearly defined long term path to enable businesses’ automation systems to evolve, through a series of small, non disruptive, cost-effective steps, to meet their changing business environments, both commercial and technical. It will maintain the system at peak performance not just through planned maintenance but by the regular upgrading of specific equipment, thus avoiding the need for major upgrades and renewals at particular intervals. Most importantly, Evolution for Life is based on the industry’s most comprehensive commitment to continuous lifecycle support, since the core of ABB’s previous generation of control systems will be supported until at least 2025.

Improving performance
In the oil and gas sector the priority is to ensure safe, reliable and non disruptive equipment performance. Plant integrity is essential. While repair and maintenance may be covered by conventional service plans, Evolution for Life goes further to provide for the planned upgrading of equipment and base control software. In this way companies can be sure they are operating at the same high level of productivity as they would if they invested in the wholesale installation of new plant. By taking the ABB route companies can optimise their processes via a series of small steps that avoid the disruption and bedding-in of new plant at very much lower costs and without risk.

This approach also ensures that an organisation has confidence in ABB’s long term support of all facets of its automation plant. Older components that perform well are not replaced but carry the same long-term commitment to ABB support. The company has committed to providing a minimum of ten years continuing support to any product that is removed from active sale.

According to a recent report by ARC, the global value of installed automation systems in process manufacturing facilities that have reached the end of their lifecycle to be $65 billion. These ageing ‘closed’ systems are a barrier to integration and their operators need a migration plan to help them remain competitive. However, many migration solutions require extensive and expensive rework, automation application redevelopment and a disruptive ‘rip and replace’ of existing equipment just to return functionality to current levels of performance. Through Evolution, ABB offers a viable, cost-effective alternative that enables customers to preserve the massive capital and intellectual investment and experience residing in their existing applications.

Control costs, reduce risk
According to ABB’s Andrew Glover, who is responsible for implementing Evolution in the UK, “Evolution is a well thought out incremental plan that lets our customers adopt new capabilities at their pace, according to their need – adding capability, not replacing. In the oil and gas sector, for example, the pace of investment and upgrading may be fast, in order to achieve maximum productivity. In other industries the needs may be quite difference. Evolution enables customers to match their investment to their specific productivity improvement needs while minimising risk, both in term of money and productivity.”

There is a further business benefit as well, Andrew Glover continues, “for some customers the unpredictable nature of their industry necessarily limits their business horizons, sometimes to only five years or less. This makes it impossible to justify a huge capital expenditure (CAPEX). However, the beauty of the step-wise Evolution approach is that costs are kept at the operational expenditure (OPEX) level, but the path still remains clear for future expansion.”

Four-pronged Evolution strategy
While state-of-the-art automation products are the foundation of ABB’s Evolution strategy, simply attempting to incorporate new products into an existing system will not ensure success or provide the desired results. The products represent one prong of a comprehensive, four-pronged solution that includes: products; planning; after sales programmes; engineering and project delivery.

Stage 1 Evolution products – System 800xA
The cornerstone of Evolution is ABB’s Extended Automated System 800xA that extends the reach of traditional DCS (Distributed Control Systems) beyond control of the process, to provide total plant management and control including: production management, safety, discrete and advanced control, information management, smart instrumentation, smart drives and motor control centres, asset management and documentation management capabilities.

Whatever a customer’s original system – ABB’s Advant, DCI, Freelance, INFI 90, Master, Melody, MOD 300, SATT, Symphony or a third-party system, it can be used as the basis on which to build a System 800xA installation.

Stage 2 Evolution planning
A successful Evolution programme begins with a solid plan driven by the customer’s business goals. ABB works in close collaboration with the customer to carry out a comprehensive audit of their existing system and to understand their business drivers. It then submits a three to five year plan to be reviewed and revised as necessary. Together, the customer and ABB identify and target the facilities at greatest risk that should be considered in the short-term planning process. As each phase is identified, ABB provides value and return-on-investment ideas for consideration to facilitate successful project funding requests.

The incremental approach supports flexibility, and the long-term plan is reviewed periodically and updated as required to reflect both the customer’s changing business needs and new ABB solutions.

Stage 3 Evolution after-sales
As part of Evolution, ABB promotes stepwise, incremental hardware and software upgrades to ensure that customers stay current and avoid hitting the brick wall of obsolescence – the ‘cradle to cradle’ approach. Customers are also assured that any product purchased now will be supported well into the future – they will be available on the market until 2015, and supported until 2025 at least - a guarantee that ABB believes is the best in the business. This level of commitment is provided to the core of ABB’s main control systems, some of which have been in operation for more than ten years.

Stage 4 Evolution engineering and project delivery
Engineering and delivery of solutions to customers are two important elements in the Evolution value chain. ABB has a team of highly trained and skilled operations engineers who work with the customer to carry out a comprehensive review of the requirements identified in the long-term plan. The ABB engineers than formulate a project plan to deliver the desired end results, protect the customer’s investments and present the lowest risk possible during installation.

About ABB
ABB (www.abb.com) is a leader in power and automation technologies that enable utility and industry customers to improve performance while lowering environmental impact. The ABB Group of companies operates in around 100 countries and employs about 111,000 people.

Contact for further information:
Arlene Smith, Marketing Manager for the ABB UK Service business can be contacted at – arlene.smith@gb.abb.com – tel 01224 592123.