DuPont Chooses PlantPAx DCS to

DuPont's nutrition and health plant in Esteio, Brazil — operational since 1958 and producing isolated soy protein, concentrates, and lecithin for major food manufacturers — faced an urgent control system crisis. The existing distributed control system (DCS) and PLCs had reached end-of-service-life, with the OEM ceasing support entirely. The facility had over 2,000 I/O points across a DCS managing 1,670 points and PLCs handling 408, running highly complex logic including both process control and clean-in-place (CIP) sequences. Expansion was impossible, the proprietary programming language limited local integrator options, and the risk of unplanned downtime in a continuous food-grade protein production environment made inaction untenable.

DuPont selected Rockwell Automation's PlantPAx Distributed Control System to replace the legacy infrastructure, executing the full migration within a three-week planned shutdown window. The project mobilized more than 60 professionals from eight companies over approximately one year of preparation. All 2,000+ control points were disconnected from the legacy systems, rewired, commissioned, and tested within two weeks — leaving a full week for operator familiarization using a DuPont-developed process simulator. Plant Acceptance Testing (PAT) was conducted at Rockwell Automation's Jundiaí facility using the simulator connected to the DCS controller, validating interlock logic, control loops, and HMI screens before go-live. The system was implemented in 110V AC with provisions for future migration to 24V DC via interface relays, and integrated with the plant's existing historical data system.

The migration was completed ahead of schedule — commissioned in two weeks against a three-week window — eliminating obsolescence risk and delivering measurable operational improvements. Key outcomes included:

• Increased operational availability through elimination of end-of-life system failure risk
• Improved alarm management via grayscale HMI screens that make active alarms immediately visible, reducing operator response time
• Faster maintenance cycles enabled by on-screen interlock visibility, removing the need for separate documentation lookup
• Greater control flexibility, including easier logic modification, I/O point additions, AutoTune of control loops, and expanded sequencing capability
• Better cost control through improved system monitoring, data acquisition, and historical trending

Following the project's success, DuPont planned expansion to additional units along with APC, MES, and intelligent MCC implementations.

• Schedule alignment is a hard constraint: With only three weeks of downtime available, selecting a vendor whose deployment timeline matched the shutdown window was as important as technical capability.
• Pre-commissioning simulation reduces startup risk: Using an internal plant simulator for PAT and operator training before go-live delivered measurable time savings and higher operator confidence.
• Proprietary systems create long-term lock-in risk: The legacy DCS's proprietary language directly limited integrator availability — open, scalable platforms reduce this dependency.
• Scope migration projects realistically: Over 2,000 I/O points across mixed DCS and PLC systems requires parallel workstreams and cross-company coordination from the outset.
• Modernization unlocks compounding value: Benefits like alarm management improvements and loop AutoTune were not anticipated in the original business case but materialized immediately post-deployment.