OPEN CONNECTIVITY
As knowledge is the most precious commodity in business today, the biggest challenge facing terminal managers is to deliver relevant information at the right time, in the right form, to the right people. Information availability starts with the ability to capture data at the point of activity. Intelligent devices For more than 20 years tank gauges and flow computers have provided information not only on the primary process variable, but also on the whole range of other variables that are important for the calculation of the product volume. Diagnostic information like health status and data integrity is taken into account to make absolutely sure that the correct volume is calculated. The inventory information is of little use when the information is only available in the device itself. Since the amount of information provided by the flow computers and gauges - and collected and processed in gauge interface units - cannot be communicated efficiently by using conventional analogue signals, the information is transported digitally using networks and protocols. Ethernet backbones are becoming commonplace at terminals. Ethernet is becoming the single information backbone throughout an enterprise. The use of (High Speed) Ethernet combined with the continuous increasing processing power and the use of standard protocols and programs makes it possible not only to make the inventory information available in the interface units, but also the presentation method as well as the protocol to speak, keeping the relevant information where it belongs: at the point of capturing. Integrated JAVA capabilities provide pre-configured dynamic on-board interpretation tools and dashboards in the format of HTML pages presenting only relevant processed real-time information that allow the user to make instant decisions on facts and not on assumptions. The embedded web server provides access to the information via the preconfigured dynamic web pages. Internet protocols such as Hyper Text Transfer Protocol (HTTP) to transfer hypertext describing web pages, Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) to send emails, and File Transfer Protocol (FTP) to transfer data files, such as density and temperature profiles as well as reports, are available to enable easy data transfer and access to critical process and device data via virtual private networks from anywhere at any time.
