Ian Nimmo on the changing DCS  Ian Nimmo is the expert on HMI
and Abnormal Situation Management in the world. His talk this
afternoon at the Expertune/TiPS User Group meeting is sure to
cause some serious waves, as he predicts the demise of the major
automation vendors:
------------------------------------------------------- The Rise
and Fall of the DCS The DCS came on the scene as the biggest and
most technological development in the last 50 years. We moved
away from charts and trending. We used to be able to get a good
picture of the plant by looking down the controller wall. The
DCS continued to eveolve with additional functionality. PID was
beginning to be replaced by MVC. Operators started to work with
digital numbers instead of looking at trending. The DCS
installation has become an IT nightmare as the DCS is now more
an open environment. Networks and network management techs are
as prevalent as instrumentation techs were in the old days.
Firewalls and servers are almost as common as controllers.
Remote