There are essentially three levels of control systems available today: specialty, hybrid and integrated.
Specialty control system performs a single control discipline using development platforms, languages and communications that are specific, and often proprietary, to the discipline. Example include distributed control systems (DCSs), programmable logic controllers (PLCs) and motion controllers. While these systems control specific application types very well, it is generally more expensive overall for you to deploy them throughout your plant. With only about 20% of your total cost of ownership tied up in equipment cost, these specialty controllers are ultimately more difficult and expensive to develop, integrate and maintain.
Hybrid Control Systems can control more than one control discipline by employing multiple control engineers; multiple communication protocols at different system levels; and multiple services oriented architecture (SOAs) in the information space. These systems offer improvements in integration and information availability through the continued use of multiple development environments, control engines and protocols. This still mean that development and maintenance is not optimized, and integration between hybrid elements is still required.
Integrated control systems provide multidiscipline control across user’s internal supply chain, using a single communication protocol and a single SOA for information integration. Integrated systems optimize the plant’s internal supply chain between manufacturing areas to help reduce development, integration, maintenance and operational costs. These integrated systems improve information capabilities and convergence with the user’s IT system to help improve decision-making and use of production assets.