Distributed Control System (DCS)
Definition
A DCS is a plant-centric control architecture that distributes control across networked controllers, operator stations, and servers to run continuous or batch industrial processes with high reliability and deterministic performance.
Examples
- A refinery uses a DCS to control distillation columns, heaters, and pumps with thousands of I/O points and coordinated alarms.
- A pharmaceutical plant runs batch recipes on a DCS to sequence reactor steps, hold temperatures, and record electronic batch records.
Discover 🔎
A Distributed Control System centralizes operations for a single plant or site while distributing control logic to many controllers close to the process. It excels at high-speed, deterministic control with tight coordination between units. Compared to SCADA, which supervises widely dispersed assets over slower links, a DCS focuses on plant-wide, low-latency control networks and tightly integrated operator, alarm, and historian services.
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