AVEVA PI Domain Migration

Working with Corporate IT & Engineering Teams to Transfer Ownership of a Running PI System

OBJECTIVE: A PI process historian typically lives in a DMZ between the OT and IT networks. It has connections to the mill control systems and the business IT network to serve up process trends to desktop users. With network infrastructure, network addressing, routing, and firewall settings changing in a very short transition period, Hargrove had to assess the situation, develop a detailed plan, and work closely with the company’s personnel to ensure the PI system continued to function.

CHALLENGE: The PI system at the mill had been primarily maintained by the corporate team of the former owner. The new company had a different corporate standard for process historians and therefore lacked in-depth PI knowledge. By the time the PI system was identified as a migration risk, there were only about six weeks before the planned cutover on January 1st. The company only had a partial architecture drawing of the PI system and many unresolved questions. There was the added challenge of working through holiday periods which reduced the effective working window and constrained resource availability.

BACKGROUND: A consumer packaging company reached out to Hargrove in late November asking for support for a domain migration that they were planning for the first of the year. The company had recently purchased a mill from another company and had inherited a PI system to record process data from mill operations and other important environmental data. All IT and OT systems at the mill needed to be migrated off the former company’s domain and into the current company’s. This meant significant hardware and configuration changes to the mill network. The consumer packaging company knew they would need outside support to help migrate the PI system successfully. Hargrove Controls & Automation is trained and certified in PI system management and has experience maintaining and deploying PI systems.