Symphony Plus – new generation of ABB’s total plant automation

Zurich, Switzerland, April 19, 2011 – ABB, the leading power and automation technology group, announced the launch of its Symphony™ Plus distributed control system (DCS). Key customer benefits include improved plant productivity and energy efficiency, as well as enhanced operational security, plant safety, and a lower total cost of ownership.

Symphony™ Plus is the latest generation of ABB’s highly successful Symphony family of control systems. With more than 6,000 systems installed worldwide, over the past 30 years, Symphony represents one of the largest installed bases of distributed control systems (DCS) in the world. Many of them are operating in the power generation and water sectors.

“With the launch of Symphony Plus, we take the Symphony success story to the next level, ushering in a new era of total plant automation that is simple, scalable, seamless and secure,” said Franz-Josef Mengede, head of ABB’s power generation business.

“It helps balance performance objectives like asset availability, operational reliability and production efficiency with business goals like asset life extension, carbon reduction and regulatory compliance, thereby providing plant owners with an essential tool for achieving sustainable and profitable growth.”

Symphony Plus meets a broad spectrum of plant configurations and applications, especially in the power and water industries. It is flexible and scalable, designed to serve the needs of small and server-less applications as well as large multi-system, multi-server architectures. It supports the seamless integration of field devices, process and turbine automation systems, electrical and SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) solutions as well as business and maintenance systems.

Symphony Plus provides users with a secure, reliable control environment and built-in security features that prevent unauthorized system access.

ABB recently announced the extension of its life cycle commitment to the Symphony Harmony and Symphony Melody range of control systems as part of the company’s ‘evolution without obsolescence’ approach. This approach is based on introducing new technology while protecting the long-term investment of customers by ensuring that each new generation not only offers enhanced benefits, but is also fully compatible with its predecessor.

ABB’s commitment to continue investing in the development of the Symphony product range enables customers to effectively manage life cycle requirements and at the same time, lower their total cost of ownership.

Defining great performance

Symphony Plus enables plants and personnel to perform at their peak. It balances performance objectives like asset availability, operational reliability and production efficiency with business goals like asset life extension, carbon reduction and regulatory compliance. In so doing, it provides plant owners with an essential tool for achieving sustainable profitable growth.

Total plant automation

Symphony Plus provides users with a comprehensive view of the plant by integrating data from all plant areas and systems, including turbine control, electrical balance of plant, and remote SCADA systems. Through its open architecture, Symphony Plus seamlessly consolidates and rationalizes plant data to improve operator response to changing conditions, thereby improving plant safety and uptime.