Interview: ExxonMobil Striving to Achieve Open Automation Joins UniversalAutomation.Org

Summary

Exxon Mobil has certainly done more than its share of heavy lifting contributing to open interoperable process automation system initiatives (see the related article links below). UniversalAutomation.Org (UAO) is an independent association managing a reference implementation of an industrial automation, shared-source, IEC 61499 standard runtime software engine based on Schneider Electric nxtControl runtime code.  I had a discussion with Ryan Smeltzer, OPA program manager for ExxonMobil Research and Engineering Company, about the company’s commitment to open automation and its motivation to join the UniversalAutomation organization.

Smeltzer is part of the ExxonMobil Engineering and Technology group which provides technical expertise to existing facilities and new project development across the globe and drives continuous improvement and advancement of control, automation, and optimization technologies. He endorsed UniversalAutomation.org stating, “ExxonMobil is excited to join and collaborate with the other members on progressing what we feel will be an industry standard runtime for control logic and control applications.”  
 
Smeltzer explained this is part of ExxonMobil’s streamlining of its business structure announced April 1, 2022, combining chemical and downstream companies, and centralizing technology, engineering and other support services. Darren Woods, ExxonMobil chairman and chief executive officer, explained it this way: “Our transformed business structure enables us to more fully leverage the corporation’s scale, integration, technology advantages, and the skills and capabilities of our talented workforce, to better serve our customers.”

“We see IEC 61499 and UA.org is a core part of our Open Process Automation program to deploy our advanced control and optimization intellectual property on open platforms at the Industrial edge as appropriate including analytics and machine learning,” said Ryan Smeltzer.

Smeltzer’s vision is to have an open IEC 61499 industrial control ecosystem to select and use best-in-class components sourced from different suppliers without the constraints of custom integration, increasing manufacturing operations efficiency through portability of applications.

IEC 61499 primetime ready criteria?

Since the UniversalAutomation.org organization will have a runtime available sometime in the future, I asked Smeltzer what criteria will ExxonMobil use to decide when the UniversalAutomation.org runtime and engineering software is truly commercially viable and open in terms of number of vendor runtime engines and engineering software for people to build applications?

Smeltzer said this will happen when the market is developed enough to have sufficient standards-based competition, noting,“Within our Open Automation Process Program we have a set of criteria we are working on to measure what we call commercial readiness which is really a point where we are effectively ready to embed requirements in our global projects that says these are the requirements if you want to compete for investment such as a MIC (Master Instrumentation Contractor) or an automation provider (MAC- Master Automation Contractor) on our global projects. We have been tuning this recently as we develop the MIC strategy targeting mainly the DCS majors; later this will be used with other players.”

ExxonMobil is not willing to share these criteria currently since it is under development.

Smeltzer emphasized, “We are interested in fostering innovation in this space, which means you need some competition in the marketplace to create the environment and suppliers to support their business model for win-win dynamic.”

IEC 61499 history

Initially published in 2005 as the international IEC 61499 standard has gathered renewed interest lately with recent developments, including the Eclipse Foundation 4diac open-source IEC 61499 project and UniversalAutomation.org formation.  The history and renewed interest are explored in this article: IEC 61499 Programming Standard, will it become mainstream?

Editor engineering tool & licensing

Licensing the Schneider Electric license EcoStruxure Automation Expert editor software is the only engineering tool today for the UniversalAutomation.org runtime engine. John Conway described UniversalAutomation.org members currently can negotiate a license for the EcoStruxure Automation Expert editor software that supports IEC 61499 from Schneider Electric. In the future, Conway confirmed UniversalAutomation.org members will have a license to the source code for the Universal Automation Runtime engine, but it’s not documented at this point time.   UniversalAutomation.org does not intend to create an IEC 61499 editor or compiler. He also stated Schneider Electric including nxtControl will define licensing requirements and all the information for UniversalAutomation.org members to create editors at some point in the future.

John Conway described the intent: “We will support other companies building other IDEs so we have to either provide the information or maybe even provide a component. We have to figure out how we will actually do that, the expertise is all inside Schneider Electric today.” 

ExxonMobil advanced controls

Since ExxonMobil has done quite a bit of work creating advanced controls and optimization I asked if they plan to contribute IP to the UnoversalAutomation.org for standardized function blocks organization. Smeltzer explained this was not in the scope since it is part of their competitive advantage.The UniversalAutomation.org membership is to help nurture the development of products and offerings based on IEC 61499. 

Field trials testbeds

He emphasized ExxonMobil is trying to accelerate the time to broad commercialization with things like field trials using IEC 61499 helping to foster the industrial open architecture ecosystem. The field trials are helping ExxonMobil defined requirements for future automation investments, “the intent is to use IEC 61499 as the primary engine to execute control applications and control logic consistent with the OPAS (Open Process Automation ) standard.

Smeltzer explained, “ExxonMobil has been willing to share hands-on experience and to continue the collaborative experience promoting broader adoption of IEC 61499 fostering additional product development ensuring a nonconfidential way of sharing successes in the form of what use cases, what value proposition we are after as part of collaborating with other members. And then last but not least having a say and influence in the development of the reference standard around IEC 61499.”

First field trial: Yokogawa System Integrator

Yokogawa has been selected by ExxonMobil as the system integrator for the first field trial of an open process automation (OPA) system with over 2,000 I/O points designed to operate an entire production facility expected to be commissioned in 2023. The field trial will be running on a product running the UniversalAutomation.org runtime engine software. The field trial will take place at an ExxonMobil manufacturing facility located on the U.S. Gulf Coast, replacing the existing distributed control system (DCS) and programmable logic controllers (PLC) with a single, integrated system that meets the open process automation standard (O-PAS). The project will incorporate enhanced control capabilities enabled through the implementation of OPA (Open Process Automation) technologies and interfaces.

Ryan Smeltzer noted, “ExxonMobil is excited to have reached this important milestone with Yokogawa and progress the first field trial of an OPA system at an existing ExxonMobil manufacturing plant. The project will take advantage of significant progress made testing OPA components and the O-PAS standards in close collaboration with Yokogawa. The OPA field trial is the next step in commercializing OPA and capturing additional value from our automation and control systems.”

For the past two years, ExxonMobil and Yokogawa have been developing, testing and improving OPA technologies through the joint operation of an OPA test bed located near ExxonMobil’s Houston, Texas campus. This collaborative work has developed and qualified many of the core OPA functions in preparation for the field trial. In addition to the field trial, test bed engineers at the Houston-area development office will continue to implement and refine OPA technologies in-line with the latest version of the O-PAS standard.