Yokogawa Electric has released an upgrade to Plant Resource Manager (PRM), an integrated device management software package that can be used to centrally manage, monitor, and diagnose plant field devices, in a variety of industries.

With the R3.05 upgrade, PRM now supports Profibus DP/PA and Wired HART 7 1 devices, has a new maintenance mark function, and can run under Windows Server 2008. Through these and other enhancements, PRM can now be used to manage a much wider range of devices online and the efficiency of maintenance activities has been significantly enhanced, said a statement.

The main target markets for the product include maintenance of field devices in process industries such as oil and natural gas, petrochemicals, chemicals, power, iron and steel, pulp and paper, water and wastewater treatment.

To strengthen competitiveness, manufacturers need to improve the efficiency of their existing production lines by introducing the latest technologies. They need standardised communication protocols that will allow them to construct optimum systems by freely selecting instruments from a variety of manufacturers. In response to this need, open protocols have been developed in various regions (Europe and the US) and industries. For these multivendor systems, users now need these enhancements to PRM to centrally control and monitor information from devices that are compatible with these standardised protocols.

PRM already supports the Foundation fieldbus and HART protocols. With the added support of Profibus DP/PA and Wired HART 7, the ability to manage and monitor a wide variety of plant field devices has been significantly enhanced, said the statement.-TradeArabia News Service