Basics of Distributed Control System (DCS)

DISTRIBUTED CONTROL SYSTEM A system of dividing plant or process control into several areas of responsibility, each managed by its own controller, with the whole system connected to form a single entity, usually by means of communication buses

Used for continuous control of chemical processing Control functions are distributed throughout redundant, deterministic networked computer architecture I/O interface and level 1 control functions advanced control functions human interface DCS replaced the mainframe computers of the 1970’s non-distributed single point of failure Added a high level of robustness to control systems Pre-configured functionality geared toward process industries, but have a relatively high cost