supervisory controle

Hello everybody,
first of all I want to thank this wonderfull site for it's usefull and interactive forum and all the participants for they intresting helps.
I am new in the field of automation and I am achieving my graduation project in a chemical plant. They asked me to make a new supervisory control system using rockwell automation products.
They are using two SLC500 that had each an individual processor. The new solution is to use the RIO link by rockwell automation so the controllogix 5000 will communicate wil the two adaters (SCL500). We will remplace their processors with twos 1746-ASB cards as the RIO link needs. The controllogix 5000 will communicate via Ethernet (1756-ENBT) with a console that is executing the supervisor (factory talk view).
The programming software that we are using is RSlogix5000.

Could we call this a DCS system or SCADA?
If it is a DCS is this architecture correspond to the Plant Pax solution by Rockwell Automation (As I know Plant Pax does not use SLC500 controllors).
If it is a DCS system but not a Plant Pax could we call it a hybrid DCS?

One could call that anything they would want it to be called.
What's in a name and why does it matter?

Distributed control means that your control points are spread out or distributed over the plant, instead of concentrated at one point. So yes, you can call the new version a DCS system. But then the old system could be called that too.

Personally, I'd skip the RIO link, and use 1746-AENTR modules in the SLC/500 chassis.

rdrast said:

Personally, I'd skip the RIO link, and use 1746-AENTR modules in the SLC/500 chassis.

Click to expand...

+1

RIO has the potential to cause you a whole lot of headaches, and as a communication medium it's old technology that you will find increasingly hard to support. If you're upgrading the whole system, you would be far better off to upgrade to ethernet.