Development of Operation Technology Network for Process Flow Control Loop Components

Any industrial plant includes many operation areas. These areas are controlled using different controllers like Pro-grammable Logic Controller and Distributed Control System. To run these operations proper networking is required. In industry OT networking is always challenging as variety of instruments, controllers are involved. In this paper Programmable Logic Controller to Distributed Control system communication is im-plemented. Flow loop is interfaced to Micrologix 1400 PLC. Likewise we have 14 local Programmable Logic Controllers. Using Modbus TCP/IP communication all field devices data is available to common network. Modbus TCP gateway is configured to communicate, field devices real time data to serial card of DeltaV host system. Real time data from field devices is available to DeltaV DCS workstations. Note to Practitioner-This paper was motivated by the challenges of networking operational technology and IT technology in any industry. In industry variety of field devices are used to run processes or machines. We can classify field devices as Digital Input, Digital Output, Analog Input, and Analog Output. Even controllers like Distributed Control Systems (DCS) and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC) are offered by a variety of manufacturers. We need to configure field devices to controllers through input and output modules. DCS system supports applications like insight and AMS. We have to monitor the performance of the flow loop, which is operated through local PLC-Micrologix 1400. Modbus TCP/IP communication is demonstrated for communication between PLC-Micrologix 1400 and DeltaV DCS. For each field device registers have been mapped. Modbus gateway needs to configure with PLC-Micrologix 1400 IP address. Data sets are created in DeltaV for the field devices. Using the Delat V process historian, we can monitor trends for all parameters. Further, using the DeltaV Insight application, we can monitor the performance of the closed-loop system.