“We had to find a way to upgrade our RS3 system into next-generation technology in order to continue to increase performance and maintain minimal downtime at our plant. Honeywell’s Experion® Process Knowledge System (PKS) provided the perfect migration path at our state-of-the-art production facility to help manage all our business, processes and assets in one unique system.”
Hyun Cho, General Manager, SKC Chemicals
The SKC Chemicals Group needed to improve productivity and product quality by employing advanced control systems. The company implemented Honeywell’s Experion PKS at its PO/SM facility for automation, process and quality control. This migration has resulted in the following benefits:
SKC Chemicals Group in South Korea has made considerable additions to the development of Korea's infrastructure, industry and international stature by producing large quantities of propylene oxide (180,000 tons/year) and polyol (60,000 tons/year), which are the basis of the polyurethane industry, as well as propylene glycol (50,000 tons/year) and styrene monomer (405,000 tons/year), which are widely used for automobiles, construction, electronic appliances, food and medicine. In addition, the company has established a solid foundation in the chemicals industry through process innovation and technology development.
SKC Chemicals Group was using an outdated Emerson Rosemount RS3 system and needed a quick, cost-effective way to update its technology. “SKC had various issues with the service provided by Emerson since our old RS3 system was archaic and the price of spare parts was not realistic,” said Hyun Cho, General Manager, SKC Chemicals. “Furthermore, Emerson had a lack of local service capability. After evaluating several options, we decided to go with what we saw as a best-in-class solution – Honeywell’s Experion system.”
SKC chose Experion for its easy migration path, promise of increased productivity and reduction in unscheduled downtime. "We now have an established and innovative IT infrastructure with a reliable interface to the upper advanced process control. We have significantly reduced service and implementation costs even though we have increased our service support to 24 hours – serviced by our local Honeywell office," continued Hyun Cho.
Operators at SKC also found the Windows-based operating system easy to use, reducing training time and startup costs.
With goals for increased productivity and decreased maintenance costs, many companies are looking to Experion as a path to the newest technology available. Experion is the only process automation system designed to manage business, processes, people and assets.
As systems age, costs increase and reliability decreases. Migrating to Experion can increase performance and reduce unscheduled production downtime. The migration can occur seamlessly with minimal disruption. Solutions can include just replacing the user interface, providing an innovative and flexible operating environment that can help reduce abnormal situations, or simple hardware migrations can be performed without disrupting the process while saving intellectual property.
Hyun Cho concluded, "After evaluating all our options we soon realized that Honeywell is a company with the most project references and expertise in the industry, offering a powerful and fully functioning control system that integrates directly into our own systems and provides an easy migration to the best technology available today."