Keeping a check on unapproved automation configuration changes

Automation in today’s plants contains a large amount of data from disparate systems, measurements and applications which is continually changing as improvements are made in the plant. Since automation systems directly control the process, improper changes to them can have a negative impact upon the plant’s safety, economic throughput, environmental compliance and reliability. As such, it is essential to manage all changes made to plant’s automation.

Most countries have recognised the need to manage change in process plants and have established regulations governing the MOC process. However, the proper management of automation changes is generally not fully addressed in MOC regulations, and as a result, most industrial plants live with significant vulnerabilities associated with automation change management. Most are unaware of these vulnerabilities.

The process of MOC is required when managing changes ‘not-in-kind’, meaning any change that is not a direct replacement of the original. Since many automation system parameters are alphanumeric in nature, any change would qualify as ‘not-in-kind’ and as such should be subject to change management. In most plants today, this is not the case. Generally, if a change affects a drawing or other entity currently under change control, then an MOC case is initiated. Otherwise, robust change management may not occur. This opens the door for unapproved and undocumented changes to automation configuration, which could have disastrous results.

A universal concern with the management of change process is that it is time-consuming and costly. The two typical types of MOC systems used in today’s industrial plants are the obsolete paper-based ones or those that are merely electronic versions of them. With these systems, simple tasks, such as gathering approvals, can be very cumbersome. If the additional work of managing change to automation systems is to occur, it must be in the context of an electronic system that streamlines the process.

Integrity iMOC from PAS is a third generation intelligent management of change solution specifically designed for automation systems. As an Integrity-enabled application, it takes full advantage of PAS’ Integrity software which maps the configuration of more than 50 different automation systems. It also works with Integrity Recon, which tracks changes made to the Windows-based computing infrastructure associated with those automation systems. By combining these applications, configuration changes can be reconciled with associated MOC cases to ensure that only approved and managed changes occur. Reports of unreconciled changes are automatically generated, thus exposing the above–mentioned vulnerabilities associated with improper automation change management.

Display of Reconciled Changes

Integrity iMOC provides a graphical environment for defining custom MOC workflows. Each workflow is constructed by dragging state definitions to the desktop and linking them with transitions. Each state definition describes a specific step or stage of the MOC process, such as ‘Initiation’ or ‘Implementation’. States may contain checklists that describe each action to be taken within that particular state and include items such as text entry boxes, check boxes, file insertion points, proposed and reconciled changes, signatures and informative text.

Transitions describe how a workflow moves from one state to another. If a state has a checklist associated with it, the checklist must generally be completed before transition to the next state is permitted.

An Integrity iMOC case

To reduce the time to acquire information for design of proposed changes, and to ensure that the scope of those changes is fully understood, Integrity iMOC provides the capability to automatically identify all connections to any automation entity under change management, and where they are used. Additionally, important process safety information, such as standard operating procedures, prior or similar MOC cases, or pre-startup safety review documents may be linked to the MOC case to expedite the MOC process.

Since most plants have existing MOC systems for all other plant changes, PAS provides professional services to integrate Integrity iMOC as a subordinate to their primary MOC system. Additionally, PAS can implement an S95 compliant plant asset hierarchy, which may be used to link MOC cases to specific parts of the plant as is often done in current MOC systems.