Schneider Electric Improves time with EcoStruxure Field Device Expert

Schneider Electric, the leader in the digital transformation of energy management and automation, today released EcoStruxure™ Field Device Expert, an application that improves how engineers commission, configure and maintain field devices throughout the lifecycle of the plant. Field Device Expert’s Intelligent Commissioning Wizard completely automates detection, configuration, commissioning and testing of HART field instrumentation connected to an EcoStruxure Foxboro distributed control system (DCS). Automatic binding and configuration of HART devices has been shown to reduce commissioning schedules by more than 75 percent, leading to faster time to profit. “A report by EY[1] reveals that almost two thirds of multibillion-dollar megaprojects continue to exceed budgets, with 73 percent missing project schedule deadlines,” said Hany Fouda, Vice President, Process Automation Offer Management and Global Sales, Schneider Electric. “By automating the commissioning process, Field Device Expert significantly improves time to production and reduces effort, which has an immediate impact on project profitability. In one example, the return on investment calculations showed a savings of 96 days, which was the equivalent of $24 million of additional production for that project.” Traditional, manual device commissioning methodology is manpower intensive, making it error prone, time consuming and expertise dependent. By automating the configuration and commissioning process, Field Device Expert drastically changes automation project execution by minimizing hardware dependencies and custom engineering and offers more flexibility in the design, timing and sequence of activities. For example, with traditional commissioning methods, it can take up to 50 minutes to configure each asset. Field Device Expert’s Intelligent Commissioning Wizard shortens that time to 15 minutes, which is a 70 percent reduction. Once the plant is operating, Field Device Expert continues to ease field device configuration and condition monitoring throughout the plant lifecycle which means restarts¾like those that occur after a maintenance turnaround or any shutdown¾are also faster and easier. As part of Schneider Electric’s EcoStruxure architecture and platform, Field Device Expert improves efficiency, safety, productivity and profitability. EcoStruxure is Schneider Electric’s open, interoperable, IoT-enabled system architecture and platform and delivers enhanced value around safety, reliability, efficiency, sustainability and connectivity.