What does the Process Automation understand underDiagnosis?
Olivier Wolff
Marketing Manager Industrial Ethernet
Endress+Hauser Process Solutions AG
Presented at the ODVA2014 Industry Conference & 16th Annual Meeting
March 11-13, 2014
Phoenix, Arizona, USA
Abstract:
Having consistent diagnosis in Process Automation brings to customers great potential saving in the maintenance,repair and operations (MRO) phase. The German-based process industry end-user association NAMUR has
published a recommendation, NE 107 (“Self-Monitoring and Diagnosis of Field Devices”).
To follow these requirements, investigations and perspective on EtherNet/IPTM will be needed.
This paper will go through to these requirements.
Keywords:Diagnosis, Process Automation, intelligent field devices, NAMUR NE107
Glossary:
PLC: Programmable Logic Controller, DCS: Distributed Control System, PA: Process Automation, FA: FactoryAutomation, ATEX: Atmosphères explosibles (explosive atmosphere), SIL: Safety Integrity Level

Introduction
Today, automation is everywhere in our lives. Automation is not one word to explain all, but is divided into several
areas. This paper will focus on Process Automation (PA). To understand what Process Automation is, it will give an
overview to classify and explain the differences between Factory Automation (FA), used by manufacturingindustries, and Process Automation, used by process industries. When both industries come together in an
automation application, we call them hybrid industries. Figure 1 shows the classification of the respective industrytypes.

Figure 1: Classification of industries
The main focus of Factory Automation is the product being manufactured (see Figure 2). Acquisition costs should
be as low as possible and high speed real time communication is needed. If there is a downtime or an issue in amachine, switching off to repair, replace or remove something is easy. It could also be a simple corrective
maintenance strategy, which consists of detecting an anomaly and then restoring it to normal running conditions(“run to failure”). Since fast spare part delivery is mandatory and short runtimes of machines are common, detailed
diagnosis of a device may not be necessary. Scalability of a machine and flexibility on the production floor arecommon requirements.
A key requirement in Process Automation is safety; functional as well as environmental (see Figure 2). A chemicalplant close to a city is much more dangerous for the surroundings than an automobile-factory. There is no shut down
button to rapidly switch off a process in the event of a danger or in order to replace a faulty field device. Long-term
running for 10-20 year or more as well as high availability of the plant and its assets are common requirements.
Typical chemical processes should be able to run up to 3 years without downtime. All these requirements need highinvestments that need to be protected and maintained in the best possible way. Intelligent field devices and fieldcomponents offer added value to users. In addition to typical measurement tasks or signal converting and forwarding
tasks, these devices are able to deliver information about their current status. Efficient life cycle management andpredictive maintenance becomes possible with standardized diagnostic information provided to users.
Figure 2 summarizes the differences between Factory and Process Automation.

Figure 2: Different industrial tasks and focus
Diagnostic information
After explaining the different categories of automation, within these categories there is also a difference when it
comes to diagnosis. In Factory Automation diagnosis provides the maintenance personnel only simple information
like “everything works” - the typical green LED. In the event of a failure there could be a flashing red LED“failure”.
This kind of diagnostic information is far removed from what is commonly used in Process Automation. In Process
Automation, there are various disciplines that need to be informed when it comes to diagnostic information (seeFigure 3). While plant operators need to focus on the running process, maintenance technicians need to make sureeverything is in place to ensure the “health” of the plant. This also includes field devices. To be able to understandeach other, both sides need to have the same representation of diagnostic information..

Figure 3: Operator and maintenance console, both showing diagnostic information
A field device can provide several types of diagnostic information (sensor related, electronics related,configuration/service related). For instance, electronic related diagnostic information could be “ROM defect”.
Diagnostic information linked to the process itself or to the environment can also be shown in the console, forexample “corrosion warning” or “fluid inhomogeneous”.

Figure 4 shows an example of how diagnostic information isprovided in a maintenance console. The technician can set a socalled “empty pipe detection” in a flowmeter. When a pipe isempty or partially filled in a process application, it could damage apump or other equipment running in the process. Therefore it isnecessary to detect this in advance.

Figure 4: Standardized overview for each field device.

Since a maintenance console can have several forms (centralized asset management software, decentralized webserver, etc.) diagnostic information has to be available in the same form in different places, see Figure 5.
The same diagnostic information is available in the embedded webserver of an EtherNet/IP TM device.

Figure 5: Example of diagnostic information (maintenance console) in an EtherNet/IPTM mass flowmeter.

The menu “Health status” shows the diagnostic information “Partly filled”. A diagnostic number (assigned by thedevice maker) identifies the diagnostic information within the device. As described earlier, each piece of diagnostic
information originates in the instrument (sensor specific, electronics plate, configuration) or theprocess/environment. In this example the diagnostic number is 862. It identifies the diagnostic information within
the device. This is process-related diagnostic information because it is induced by the process itself. There is anassociated text to describe the diagnostic information and its origin. A remedy and information for maintenancepersonnel is also provided. This lists possible solutions and as well as instructions on how to remedy the fault.
Diagnostic number and status signal are mapped into four categories within the device as shown in Figures 4 and 6.
This is done in order to simplify understanding and allow quick action to be taken when diagnostic information
appears. In our example the diagnostic called “Partly filled” is mapped to the “Out of Specification” category, which
is why it is displayed with the “S” prefix (S862) in Figures 4 and 5 above.
These categories have been defined and standardized by an international association of process automation industry
end users called NAMUR. The recommendation paper NE107 “Self-Monitoring and Diagnosis of Field Devices”resulted from their work.

NAMUR NE107: Requirements from Process Automation Users
NAMUR is an international association of process automation industry endusers. It publishes recommendation documents to help end users by sharing
best practices and to guide suppliers and industry foundations on futuretechnology and product development. NAMUR represents approximately
15,000 process control experts, of whom approximately 300 are active in 33
working groups. Member companies include Novartis, BASF, Bayer,
Evonik, Shell and Clariant.

Failure (F)Function Check (C)Out of Specification(S)
Maintenance Request(M)Figure 6: NE107 Status Signals and Symbols

Of particular concern to NAMUR is the role of the operator and maintenance technician and their impact on plantreliability and uptime. Unplanned downtime is one of the primary enemies of the process industries. According toARC Advisory Group (www.arcweb.com), unplanned downtime accounts for the equivalent of 20% of all
production in the process industries. A single unplanned shutdown can wipe out your plant profit for the year. The
same piece of ARC research states that 40% of unplanned downtime events can somehow be traced back to thehuman operator in the loop. We need not always blame the human in the loop, however, since that person may beworking on faulty information or may not have the right information presented to them at the right time.
NAMUR NE 107 categorizes internal device diagnostics into four standard status signals — failure, function check,out of specification and maintenance required, (also known as “FCSM”, see Figure 6). Each of these categories canalso contain greater detail. In the case of failure, for example, can the failure be traced to the device or the process?
Is maintenance required immediately, or is the requirement more for long-term maintenance?
The ultimate result of this is a series of new field diagnostic alarms that correspond to the four primary diagnostic
categories outlined by NAMUR in its document. Several standardized, and therefore manufacturer-independentparameters, are available to configure the NAMUR category, the priorities and the filter mechanisms for the alarms.
With NAMUR NE 107 diagnostics built in, you can turn off diagnostics you do not need or configure how thediagnostics are reported. This supports the configurability mandate of NE 107.

Digital communication protocols and NE107 implementation
Digital communication protocols focused on Process Automation such as FOUNDATION fieldbus, PROFIBUS PAor HART have already implemented this NAMUR recommendation in their respective specifications (“FF-912”,“PA Profile 3.02” and “HART 7”), in order to provide the required diagnostic information to Process Automation
users.
This paper will use the implementation of FOUNDATION fieldbus with “FF912”
as an example to show the details and benefits of implementing NE107 for Process
Automation users. As mentioned earlier, from a device manufacturer’s view point,
there are four type of diagnostic information in a field device. Sensor, Electronicand Configuration/Service diagnostic information are related to the instrument(field device). Process/Environment diagnostic information is related to thesurroundings of the field device. Figure 7 shows the classification of the diagnosticinformation. Each piece of diagnostic information within each category does nothave the same importance and therefore has to be classified based on its severity.
This determines the prioritization of diagnostic information within the field device.
Once this classification is done by the manufacturer, it becomes possible for theuser to assign the diagnosis information to the status signals of NAMUR NE107(Failure, function check, out of specification, or maintenance requested).

Figure 7: Diagnostic information can be grouped in a field device
As there are four categories of diagnostic information and four grades of severity of the diagnostics within the fielddevice, there are sixteen mapping possibilities. Field devices manufacturers have to define which diagnosticinformation (e.g. the 23 items in Figure7) should be in which of the 4 categories (in gray in Figure 7) and at what
priority level within that category. Users should have the possibility to assign, these grades of diagnostic severity tothe NE107 status signal. For instance, the status signal “failure” (red circle X from Figure 6) could be composed of
all the highest prioritized diagnostic information of each gray category of Figure 7. In order to keep diagnostic
information mapping with NE107 meaningful, manufacturers should issue recommendations in order to guidecustomers in their maintenance strategies.

Figure 8: Assignment of diagnostic information prioritized categories to one of the four NAMUR NE107 Status
Signals and Symbols as it is done within FOUNDATION fieldbus “FF912”.
In addition to the assignment of each severity grade of a diagnostic information category (sixteen possibilities) to aNE107 status signal (four possibilities), it is possible within FOUNDATION fieldbus to have the user manually reassign a single item of process related diagnostic information to a NE107 status signal. The user can configure if hewants to have this NE107 status signal also mapped to his operator console as an alarm, in addition to themaintenance console (Figure 8, DCS Mapping). Returning to the empty pipe example, it is possible to re-assign thisdiagnostic information item to one of the four NE107 status signals, independent of the other process related
diagnostic information items.
A user could consider re-assigning every process related diagnostic information (see Figure7, the 12 items in“process induced failures” category) to an NE107 status signal depending on the field device (e.g. flowmeter,analysis transmitter) and the application (e.g. Clean in Place process in food industry). Therefore FF912 provides anarea for single configurable diagnostic information (blue area, see Figure 8). Due to technical limitations of theprotocol (4 Bytes available), however, the number of possible assignments is limited to sixteen. This means theprocess related diagnostic information which makes sense for the customer must be selected. For instance“corrosion” could be seen in one application as a failure status signal (F) that needs to stop the process, whereas inanother application it is only considered as a maintenance request (M).
In Process Automation it is very important to be able to classify diagnostic information.
A plant operator and a maintenance technician have to handle thousands of diagnostics, alarms and warnings withina day, therefore a good classification is mandatory to keep track of what to be done, when and where.
With the growing importance of EtherNet/IP TM for Process Automation a concept for the implementation of theNAMUR NE107 is required. Looking at the implementation of NE107 in traditional process automation fieldbuses,
there should be a mechanism to guide and help customers to optimize diagnostic information behavior.
Due to the power of the EtherNet/IP TM protocol, a user should have the possibility to map each diagnostic
information item from these categories (sensor, electronic, configuration, process related) to an NE107 status signal.
However, to ease device configuration for the user, the device vendors should be able to limit which NE107 status
signals can be mapped to certain diagnostic information.

NE107 possible implementation with EtherNet/IPTM
This paper does not aim to make a final proposal on how to implement the NE107 recommendation into
EtherNet/IPTM but to give a starting point and benchmark on what has been done already and identifying what moreneeds to be done.
The assembly object of EtherNet/IPTM has an attribute called input assembly. The device maker can define it in theway that makes the most sense. An input assembly of an EtherNet/IPTM flow device is represented in Figure 9.
Diagnostic No.

NE107 Status Signal

ChannelData0, Data1, …Data N

2 Byte1 Byte1 ByteN BytesFigure 9 EtherNet/IPTM input assembly proposal••••

Diagnostic No. is related to the diagnostic information within the device. Diagnostic numbers are vendor
specific. Possible range from 0 to 65535.
NE107 Status Signal is related to one of four diagnostic classification categories; the assignment is fixed by theconstructor, although it be should in the future configurable by the system integrator or end-user. Possible
values (F,C,S,M: see Figure 6)
Channel is used for field devices with multiple channels (for instance an analytical transmitter with several
sensors, like pH, conductivity, oxygen). The value could be 0 or 1 indicating whether diagnostics are device
related or channel related.
Description of “Data Byte”(Figure 10)
o Value means the Process Value (PV), such as the mass flow in a flowmeter.
o Status indicates the data quality of the process value. Status can be labeled in three categories (GOOD,BAD and UNCERTAIN), (0x80, 0x0C, 0x40). Note: classification of information into NE107
categories and data quality status are two independent functions and will not be developed in thispaper.
o Padding Byteo Unit represents two bytes displaying the unit of the value (PV), for instance ounces/hour (0x086E, see
CIP Spec, Vol 1 Appendix D, Vendor Specific range).

Figure 10 “Data Byte” structure proposal
EtherNet/IPTM and CIPTM offer the possibility to create new objects. A mechanism to manually assign a diagnostic
number to a NE107 status signal is needed. The recommendation of this paper is to further investigate the creationof a new object called “diagnostic information”.

Conclusion
This paper discussed and presented the understanding and relevance of diagnosis in Process Automation. To
increase acceptance of EtherNet/IPTM in Process Automation, diagnosis should be taken into account in ODVA CIP
specifications. A standardized process of how to assign each diagnostic information category to a NAMUR NE107
status signal should be defined in order to give customers the highest flexibility in their maintenance strategies.

References:
Endress+Hauser: “Taking diagnostics to the next level”
NAMUR NE107 “Self-Monitoring and Diagnosis of Field Devices”.
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