ICS Services
The Right Technology Partner
We understand that the quality of your control system is integral to daily operations, and we’re committed to designing solutions that ensure precise results and substantial, measurable return on investment (ROI).
Xtellia consistently delivers control systems that enable high quality, high-efficiency, and highly reliable manufacturing and industrial processes.
Offerings include integration for PLC, DCS, and SCADA controls for batch and continuous process initiatives.
We work with customers with projects ranging from a single loop to plant-wide systems of 100,000 points or more.
Xtellia provides complete implementation, training, service, support, and collaboration.
Consulting
To ensure the right solution and technology stack is selected for your project - our team engages at the ideation stage of the project to gather and validate requirements, participate in the design process to ensure the modularity and flexibility required at the automation platform level to automate the process exists in the detailed design. This process modularity is imperative to the application of standards such as ANSI/ISA-88 and PackML to avoid trying to compensate for process design deficiencies with automation, which in turn add complexity and costs to the solution and project, respectively. The application of industry best practices and standards streamlines the automation development process and offers modularization, flexibility, and scalability.
A process design that accounts for automation enables the maximization of value creation by ensuring the process is optimized considering the features and capabilities of a digital platform versus paper-based processes.
The automation solution design process leverages upon the process optimization output to design a solution that best maximizes the utilization of features and capabilities a given automation platform can offer to meet user requirements and deliver maximum value. This includes a platform fitness to deliver a robust, flexible, reliable, and scalable for the given process archetype with maximum out-of-the-box functionality to minimize customizations and facilitate its lifecycle management and alignment with the product roadmap.
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Requirements gathering and validation.
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Platform/Vendor Selection
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Sequence of Operations Development and Validation
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Staff Augmentation and Capabilities development
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Strategy & Road-mapping
Design
A successful automation solution design requires approved user requirements and the process sequence of operations. These need to consider the modularity, flexibility, and scalability of the process design required to achieve the result. The automation design begins with the identification of the various unit operations (UO), their boundaries, associated control modules (CM), the identification of equipment modules (EM), control strategies, equipment phases (EPH), operations (OP), unit procedures (UP), procedures, and how all these solution components need to come together to automate the process. This design process is platform agnostic, and it's vital to break down the solution into its basic elements to achieve maximum flexibility in controlling any given process to achieve the design's goal.
Many projects fail or result in complex solutions that try to fix process mechanical issues and/or are highly customized beyond the features and capabilities the automation platform can offer out-of-the-box and deviating from the vendor's intended product roadmap. In the end, the solution is unlikely to work or will not be flexible or scalable resulting in added project and lifecycle management costs. The automation solution cannot compensate for process deficiencies nor is it intended to.
The design phase must also take into consideration system interfaces and underlying frameworks and best practices. It is easy to fall into trying to solve every problem beyond the actual system requirements to deliver a fully functional and compliant solution in time and within budget.
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Process and Packaging Controls
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Motion & Robotics Integration
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Vision & Inspection Applications
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Owner's representative
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System testing and start-up
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Training
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Ongoing Support
Development
The right design is the foundation for a robust solution and a successful implementation. The development process is also greatly simplified if the process design incorporates automation-by-design (AbD), and it takes the automation platform's out-of-the-box features and capabilities into the design process thereby enabling the end solution to be built faster and with less testing of new functionality.
During the development process, the solution is optimized further by the standardization of processes and operations and the development of building blocks, recipe and workflow templates to be leveraged for a particular solution as well implementations across the site and potentially across sites.
The development of such templates simplifies the overall solution, documentation, and validation and thus results in sustained value generation across the site and enterprise.
It is also of critical importance in ensuring compliance with user requirements to demonstrate the solution components to the user and stakeholders frequently and incorporate their input before finalizing the development process.
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Programming and Configuration of multiple automation platforms
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Master Control Recipe
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Master Workflows
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Standard Building Blocks as per S88 Standards
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Validation Documentation
Deployment
The deployment process requires a methodical approach that focuses on demonstrating compliance with design requirements by exercising the operating model, every path of a subset of representative product definitions and/or operating modalities, designed to achieve the desired result while allowing the flexibility for testing, fixing bugs, and quick functionality fixes to take place concurrently and help prepare the solution for validation.
Allowing the flexibility to test and make corrections to the solution in a production environment enables an efficient commissioning and correction process, a smooth and efficient deployment and validation process that shows progress and keeps stakeholders and team members motivated and engaged in the process and meets or exceeds project deliverable constraints such as schedule and budget.
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Authoring & execution of FAT, SAT, and IOPQ protocols
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System and equipment-interfaces
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Cut Over & Go-Live
Support
Regardless of the maturity level of your digital enterprise - counting on expert support from your technology partner not only through the project lifecycle but through the automation platform adoption and lifecycle management process is imperative to achieve the right balance between full-time staff resources and external partner support.
It isn't always cost-effective to staff up for picks and valleys at the same level. Leveraging partners to help smooth staffing for the picks is a good strategy that also helps strengthen the partnership and creates continuity upon which trust is built.
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Hyper care support
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BU Technical Support
Technology
We work on some of the most common automation platforms in industry. However, we are platform and vendor agnostic and will work on your platform of choice based on its suitability to your process and overall project success factors to ensure satisfaction and maximum value generation for your business.
The expertise and methodologies we employ are also vendor and platform agnostic and can be adopted universally.
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Rockwell PlantPAx
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Emerson DeltaV
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Siemens PCS 7
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Wonderware/AVEVA System Platform
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Siemens WinCC/TIA Portal
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Honeywell Experion PKS
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GE iFIX
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Ignition
Integrations
One of the ultimate goals of process automation is to maximize process efficiency by automating repetitive tasks from end to end of your process and allocating your workforce to more value-added operations that cannot be fully automated. Industrial Control Systems interact with sensors, actuators, and end-users to execute the process on the shop floor. ICSs generate and require as input important data and information to/from other systems on the Manufacturing Operations Management level, the Enterprise, and even the Cloud, which require horizontal and vertical integrations to help build the ultimate value chain. That can lead to greater efficiencies and change traditional production relationships among suppliers, producers, and customers—as well as between human and machine.
We possess extensive experience integrating with other systems to build robust and flexible solutions that deliver maximum value by enabling operations through bidirectional electronic data exchange to realize your digital ecosystem.
Contact
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