"The OPC connection has revolutionized how we access and analyze data – we can generate environmental reports faster and more easily than we used to."
David McSwain,
Senior Process Control Engineer with Celanese Acetate
Process control engineers at Celanese Acetate's plant in Rock Hill, South Carolina needed a connectivity solution to interface two Fisher-Rosemount RS3 DCSs in two different areas of the plant with a Wonderware IndustrialSQL, their central process historian. This would enable plant personnel to use WonderWare’s ActiveFactory client application to perform trending and data analysis and to create reports. Prior to pursuing Matrikon for an OPC connectivity solution, personnel at the plant were taking data directly from the DCSs and manually preparing environmental reports.
One of the Fisher-Rosemount DCSs was already connected to WonderWare’s IndustrialSQL via a serial connection, but this arrangement proved slow and unreliable. To speed up the data transfer and create a more robust system, senior process control engineer David McSwain integrated Fisher-Rosemount RNIs on both plant controllers thus enabling McSwain to connect to the network via Ethernet. Matrikon’s OPC Server for Fisher-Rosemount RS3 RNI was used to bridge the gap between the DCSs and the process historian. To complete the connection, the OPC server interfaced directly with WonderWare’s OPCLink, an OPC Client , enabling the process historian to read and store values from the DCSs.
Even though his experience with OPC was limited, McSwain was able to handle the integration of the server himself. This is partly due to the fact that Matrikon’s OPC Server for Fisher-Rosemount RS3 RNI is a plug & play pro