Legacy Upgrades
Automation has been key to industrial operation and efficiency for many years, and as a natural result, many systems installed all those years ago are now obsolete and difficult if not impossible to support. To compound things their reliability must start to become questionable. If you were to draw a graph of the rate of failure of all electrical equipment against time then you will always get what is called the “bath tub curve” because it is shaped like the cross section of a bath. From the graph you would see that the rate of failure of new products is relatively high as the products “burn in”. The rate then drops to a low level where high reliability is the norm. After a period of some years the rate of failure starts to climb, and quite soon the rate of failure of a legacy control system type increases significantly. The net result is that the control system that has been running your process reliably for the past several years is running increasingly on borrowed time, and to compound things, when it does fail getting the system to run again will be difficult and almost certainly time consuming – probably at the worst time for production! Very often documentation and even the software for legacy systems is lacking, however by using the skills and experience within Optimal we are able to reverse engineer most processes, thus enabling us to replace your control system – no matter what type or make – with a modern equivalent that is well documented and backed up.
Further and very important points in relation to implementing a system upgrade before the failure occurs are as follows:
- Time – the change over can be timed to suit production demands and so the impact on production is minimised
- Functionality improvements – if the control system upgrade is left until the failure occurs then there will be a high pressure situation for all involved to get the new system in and running again as quickly as possible, and so production improvements will be low on the priority list and will not be implemented. After the upgrade the system will therefore continue to run as it did before, and any potential improvements that could have given a payback will have been lost
- Cost – An upgrade executed under an emergency situation will cost more not only in the short term, but also the long term as any payback potential will have been lost
Having reversed engineered and upgraded many control systems; Optimal is well placed to help you rejuvenate your system with modern, supportable automation equipment. Please email or 'phone our sales team using the Contact Us page and we will arrange for a specialist to contact you and discuss your specific application.
- legacy DCS upgrade
- legacy SCADA upgrade
- legacy MES upgrade
- legacy PLC upgrade
- Siemens S5 Legacy Upgrade
- Texas 5TI Legacy Upgrade
- Gem80 Legacy Upgrade
- Picomat Legacy Upgrade
- ACCOS Legacy Upgrade
- Satt Control Legacy Upgrade
- Allen Bradley PLC2 Legacy Upgrade
- Allen Bradley PLC3 Legacy Upgrade
- Allen Bradley PLC5 Legacy Upgrade
- Negretti Automation Legacy Upgrade
- Toshiba Legacy Upgrade
- Opto 22 Legacy Upgrade
- FIXDMACS & FIX32 Legacy Upgrade
- Wizcon Legacy Upgrade
- FactoryLink Legacy Upgrade