(4c) Control System Migration Program for Dow's Hydrocarbons Facilities

Dow’s proprietary MOD5™ system has been the control platform of choice for most businesses within Dow over the past 38 years. Since its rollout in 1980, it has enabled a renaissance age for innovation, optimization and leveraging among engineers allowing for year over year improvements in asset utilization and production capability. The perfect storm comprising component obsolescence, expertise loss, and new regulations has accelerated retirement of our MOD5™platform. A company-wide Migration Program was initiated to drive this effort to convert 150+ plants from the existing MOD5™ controllers to commercial systems, primarily towards ABB 800xA.

In this paper, we will describe the migration process of MOD5™ to ABB 800xA, and the plans of converting 13 of our hydrocarbons facilities to the new platform. We will also cover challenges related to schedule, hardware design, project resources, application development and operator training.