SIMATIC PCS 7

Providing continuous operation and consistent product quality while reducing plant costs are only a few of the many challenges that the Process Industry is facing today. The control system plays an important role in meeting those challenges. SIMATIC PCS 7 enables you to respond quickly to constantly changing market requirements through its user-friendliness, a high system availability, investment security, future-safe technology, together with a reduced total cost of ownership.

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A process control system includes numerous heterogeneous components, each with specific parameters and settings. These are subject to this dynamic modification process through updates, upgrades, modernizations and expansions. Without system support, it becomes increasingly difficult and expensive to keep track of the current state of hardware and software and continually update it as the plant gets older.

 

The PCS 7 Management Console can be used to minimize the administrative requirements for a single SIMATIC PCS 7 plant or a plant network. The current status of the installed hardware and software components can be called at any time. The PCS 7 Management Console permits:

◾ Central, standardized administration of SIMATIC PCS 7 software

◾ Inventorying all hardware and software components of the plant configured with SIMATIC PCS 7

 

With small plants, the PCS 7 Management Console can be installed and operated on the PCS 7 Engineering Station. However, a stand-alone PCS 7 Management Console on a PCS 7 Industrial Workstation is typical for large plants or a network of plants. The Kerberos protocol ensures secure authentication of communication between the SIMATIC PCS 7 Management Console.

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Central software administration New SIMATIC PCS 7 installations, updates and service packs are administration components as well as upgrades to the current software version. The installation on the target station(s) does not require active participation of the user. Security mechanisms prevent impairment of runtime operation.

◾ Provision of installation files on a dedicated file server/ PCS 7 Management Console

◾ Adding/removing PCS 7 setups in the central setup management

◾ Creating plant-specific or user-specific pre-configured setup packages

◾ Rollout of pre-configured setup packages on target stations: – Addition of software packages during installation – Direct editing of uninstalled setup packages

◾ Checking of target stations for installation readiness

◾ Remote disabling of station for launching an update installation

◾ Monitoring the status during the entire installation and continuing the installation after restart or network disruption

◾ Remote enabling of a station after completion of an update installation. Creation of system inventory The central creation of an inventory of installed hardware and software components simplifies the production of a detailed inventory report and permits rapid determination of candidates for upgrade and replacement actions:

◾ Central recording of inventory data by reading out of the engineering system or the component

◾ Inventory report in Microsoft Excel format

◾ Combination of filter results with user-defined categories

◾ Colored marking of filtered data

◾ License verification of installed software licenses

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