Sipchem is a chemical manufacturer with customers in the construction, solvents, automotive, electronics, polymer, coatings and pharmaceutical industries. Like many others in its industry, the company grappled with aging process control equipment and the associated obstacles. Sipchem recognized the risks of production loss due to obsolescence, diminishing vendor support and lack of spare parts inventory. It also wanted to upgrade software to meet its internal standards for cyber security, to protect the safety of the system as well as the business.
So, the company decided to upgrade the automation systems of the carbon monoxide (CO), vinyl acetate monomer (VAM) and acetic acid (AA) plants at its complex in Jubail Industrial City, Saudi Arabia, to the latest version of Emerson Process Management’s DeltaV distributed control systems (DCS). The upgrade at each plant included replacing four servers and six operator stations, the software for approximately ten controllers, and swapping six traditional switches with “smart” switches.