Industrial and infrastructure companies can meet their automation needs and deliver on growing energy management requirements with Schneider Electric PlantStruxure architecture, the company says.

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Schneider Electric PlantStruxure architecture is a new collaborative system that allows industrial and infrastructure companies to meet their automation needs and deliver on growing energy management requirements. The system offers flexible, scalable and collaborative architectures that are the building blocks for manufacturing and process within the Schneider Electric EcoStruxure energy management architecture portfolio. EcoStruxure allows organizations to improve energy efficiencies across multiple domains of business including process automation. PlantStruxure integrates both hardware and software components throughout the plant, delivering a complete process management solution that allows companies to optimize their energy usage and drive maximum efficiency within their operations while also improving productivity, the company said. The announcement was made at the 14th Annual ARC Forum in Orlando on Feb. 8.

Challenges for industrial companies include increased competitive pressures, a volatile global economy, tighter compliance and regulatory requirements and higher costs of materials, said Michel Crochon, executive vice president, industry business, Schneider Electric. "To compete in this new world, collaboration and decision-making based on actionable and relevant information is essential. PlantStruxure breaks down information silos with open, standards-based technologies to drive speed and agility - helping users gain a unique competitive advantage."

Schneider Electric said PlantStruxure:

- Allows easy collaboration between plant and operation managers, as well as engineering and maintenance teams through its powerful software suite combined with field proven hardware and open Ethernet-based technologies;

- Enables high process availability and offers redundancy and functional safety at each level of the architecture, to meet the requirements of industries such as oil & gas, chemical, petrochemical, power and mining;

- Reduces project development, operation and production costs, while gaining real-time visibility of business performance, improved compliance and ROI.

"Traditionally, process automation systems, energy management systems, production management systems, and even plant design and engineering tools have each occupied separate domains. Manufacturers and the industry in general are increasingly moving to single environment encompassing production management, energy management and control systems functions as well as business information," said Crochon.

With PlantStruxure, Schneider Electric leverages its experience in the domains of automation, process control and energy management to deliver a system that provides a single architecture for all process control needs, the company said. PlantStruxure allows users to optimize their plant efficiency, reduce operating costs and improve energy efficiency by implementing strategies that combine all of these aspects across the entire lifecycle of their system.

Craig Resnick, Research Director, ARC Advisory Group, authored the white paper, "Schneider Electric Deploys New PlantStruxure Platform. "Conventional approaches to process automation and operations management are evolving as processors and manufacturers demand enhanced visualization, intelligence, control and agility, which requires increased power and energy management capabilities," according to Resnick. "A collaborative framework, such as Schneider Electric's PlantStruxure platform, will encourage the further breakdown of barriers to information by enabling a more comprehensive multi-disciplined operational strategy, which in turn impacts productivity, responsiveness, lifecycle costs, energy efficiency, and most importantly, profitability."

www.schneider-electric.com/sites/corporate/en/solutions/domain/process-management.page

Video: www.schneider-electric.com/sites/corporate/en/solutions/domain/plant-struxure-video.page

See other announcements at the 2010 ARC Forum .

- Edited by Mark T. Hoske, editor in chief, Control Engineering , www.controleng.com.