Chevron’s HMI Upgrade Embraces Thin Client Technology

For over a decade, Automation Control Products (ACP) has been changing how the industrial automation sector does business in the competitive, fast paced, global marketplace with the ThinManager Platform.  Today, ACP is a worldwide leader in the automation industry that provides full-feature centralized thin client and terminal server management software.  Our unique platform offers trendsetting centralized management solutions for the modern factory by simplifying management of applications and visual resources.  When combined with ACP’s ThinManager, each client has performance and features unmatched by products from any other company.

In March of 2012, we published an article after speaking with B.K. Wallace, an Infrastructure Server Analyst for Chevron North America Exploration and Production, regarding their upcoming pilot project using a custom ThinManager Platform system to eventually manage all of their North American CO2 facilities (PDF available here).  After months of testing and implementation, AutomationWorld contacted ACP, as well as Chevron, to do a follow-up story about this successful deployment:

 

Thin client management software and multi-monitor technology enables bottom-line savings and speedy implementation for a control room retrofit pilot project at Chevron North America.

By Grant Gerke, Digital Managing Editor

West Texas is home to tumbleweeds, horses, desolate highways and Chevron North America oil and gas fields. This venerable oil producer’s drive for efficiency led to a successful pilot project that employs thin client software from Automation Controls Products (ACP, www.thinmanager.com). With the ThinManager Platform, Chevron is reducing hardware and maintenance costs by utilizing “thin” PC clients instead of traditional, more expensive PC hardware.

 

The ThinManager software platform monitors a Chevron oil and gas operation, where CO2 is stripped from subsurface rock that contains oil deposits. The complex process monitors valves, pumps and flow meters in a rugged, hot environment, and where equipment life spans are short. Chevron North America saw an opportunity to reduce maintenance and equipment purchases with thin client technology.

 

Thin client technology includes terminal services, virtualization, virtual desktop interface (VDI) and thin client PCs, which have no hard drives, no storage space and no programs to upload or update. Also, the thin client PC by default is using five-to-six year old PC boards, and usually does not have an operating system. Applications are delivered from one central location—in this case, with the ThinManager 6.0 XLi software—which makes installation and configuration very efficient…

 

You can read the rest of the article here.

 

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Tom Jordan

Marketing Lead for ThinManager - A Rockwell Automation Technology