Reduce the expense of field wiring

Intelligent Marshalling from Houston, Texas-based Invensys Operations Management can eliminate process field rewiring and, indeed, the need for marshalling cabinets entirely. Furthermore, Intelligent Marshalling breaks the dependency between control system design and I/O subsystem installation, says the company.

The solution uses the Foxboro Universal Fieldbus Module (FBM) 247, which fits into the standard base plate of the company’s I/A Series DCS and is software programmable to manage most standard I/O combinations. Working from a networked I/A Series workstation, engineers can configure modules for operation with HART, analog and digital inputs and outputs, pulsed inputs, frequency signals or any combinations.

Intelligent Marshalling overcomes several obstacles to efficient I/O operational and maintenance management. It lowers equipment costs by reducing cabinet footprint requirements and improving I/O density. It also provides major savings in inventory. Rather than maintaining a spares inventory accommodating various combinations, plants need only reserve a relatively small number of FBM 247 modules, ready to configure.

Minimizing spares inventory is especially valuable in DCS installations that have fixed requirements for maintaining spares, for example, defined by I/O type, calling for minimum percentage of each I/O type on hand. Because Invensys’ Intelligent Marshalling module is a universal device, a single I/O point within one module can deliver any required combination and thus replace what might otherwise be a costly inventory of spares.