Smart Valve Positioners Gaining Acceptance in Indian Process Industry

ARC’s recent market survey on control valves and positioners reveals that a significant percentage of shipments of control valves to the Indian Refining industry are those fitted with smart valve positioners in 2007. Equally interesting finding is the preference of Electric Power industry procurement getting biased to use of smart valve positioners. With volumes rising and the average selling price between conventional electro-pneumatic positioners and smart positioners narrowing, the drive towards increased use of latter is to expected.

According to ARC, major smart valve positioner suppliers in the Indian market, such as Siemens, Fisher Controls, Metso Automation, and Yamatake are observed to be strategizing their relationships with the OEMs –control valve suppliers as also the end users.

However, even as use of digital valve positioners is on the rise, challenges remain, according to S.R. Venkatapathy, ARC Advisory Group. Use of smart valve positioners necessitates installing mostly proprietary software in the host control system.

Considerable confusion exists among the end users who perceive an increased complexity regarding the effective implementation of digital positioners. This has resulted in under utilization and exploitation of smart valve positioners’ full capabilities. Variations in different control systems of vendors interpreting device alerts and abridged text of error codes, is rendering it difficult for manufacturers to determine the exact nature of device alerts. Also several vendors’ smart valve positioners in a given plant, only heightens the end users’ challenges.

In ARC’s Fifth India Forum, ‘Winning Strategies and Best Practices for Process Industries’, scheduled for July 10-12, 2008 in Hyderabad, India, speakers will present case studies, hold workshops, and deliberate on emerging trends and best practices in this area of process manufacturing industry while addressing Safety Instrumented Systems.