Process control refers to the control of the operational parameters of a system by monitoring one or more of its characteristics over time. It is used to insure that the quality and efficiency of the system remain within desired parameters over the course of time. While process control is typically employed in the manufacturing sector for process, repetitive and discrete manufactures, it also has wide application in service industries, such as environmental control.
Process control equipment typically utilizes control/sensing devices that are physically integrated into the systems being controlled. For example, a thermostat is typically used in environmental control to insure that building temperatures remain within specified parameters. Likewise, flow control sensors and automated valves are typically used in process manufacturing to insure proper fluid flow volumes.
Though in early process control systems, control/sensing devices were typically stand-alone units, modern process control systems provide central workstations for monitoring and controlling the control/sensing devices. Particularly robust systems are the I/A Series™ industrial automation systems designed, manufactured and marketed by the assignee hereof, The Foxboro Company, of Foxboro, Mass., USA. In these systems, multiple control/sensing devices are coupled by way of buses to control stations which, in turn, are coupled by way of a local area network (LAN) to one or more operator workstations.
The I/A Series systems are built around the client/server model. Client applications software executing on the workstations exchange information with the control/sensing devices via a server, referred to as the “object manager,” executing in distributed fashion in the control stations. Upon request by a client application, the server creates, locates, accesses and updates data structures (“objects”) storing information on the status of at least selected control/sensing devices. For example, a client application that displays temperatures sensed by a thermocouple requests that the server create an object storing a temperature reading from the thermocouple and that the server notify the client each time the temperature changes.
Although modern process control systems, such as the I/A Series systems, have proven quite successful, to date they have provided only limited remote access capabilities. Thus, while numerous operator workstations may reside within the factory or facility in which the control/sensing devices are disposed, it has traditionally proven difficult to access and control those devices outside those areas.
Remote access and control of processes is desirable for a number of purposes. A plant manager who is “on the road,” for example, may wish to monitor the plant processes while travelling. By way of further example, the manufacturer of process control equipment may require remote access to a plant's control/sensing devices in order to provide technical support.
An object of this invention is to provide improved methods and apparatus for process control.
Another object of the invention is to provide such methods and apparatus as permit monitoring and control of remote processes.
Still another object of the invention is to provide such methods and apparatus as can be readily adapted to existing automated process control systems.
Yet still another object of the invention is to provide such methods and apparatus as can be implemented without undue expense and without undue consumption of resources.