Production Intelligence
We Feel Your Pain
Continuous process production facilities invest significant capital and time in distributed control systems and data collection activity. These systems collect reams of data from hundreds of data points. Ultimately the goal of the investment is that data generated by these systems will provide meaningful information that will assist plant managers to monitor and improve performance, understand economic impact or perhaps increase plant safety and environmental control.
The question is: are you reaping the rewards of your data stockpile? How do you harness the power of your data to effectively and easily analyse plant performance?
When it comes to data collection and analysis, complex production facilities feel the same pain; the volume of data generated far exceeds the built-in capacity to convert data into action. The data itself presents problems including integrity issues such as gaps and errors, omissions, noise, multiple sources and formats, sheer volume and high order relationships that are difficult to discern.
In addition, the production process is divided and managed by various functional silos across the operation. Each group generates and captures data to assist in performing daily operational tasks. While each department collects valuable data, it is stored in unique databases that suit the purpose of the functional group. While this silo-based decomposition is a natural evolution in complex process environments, it creates a fragmented view of data which ultimately results in a decomposed, fragmented view of overall plant operations and performance.
While various controlled measures such as input, temperature, pressure, flow rates may display what is happening, they do not explain why the plant is operating as it is. When an event occurs in one area of the process it is almost impossible to determine the impact it may have on other areas of the process.
Current approaches to industrial data analysis rely heavily on a human investigator to place data and analysis results in the proper context. Unfortunately, with increasingly complex industrial environments generating tens of megabytes of data per day, this becomes an unmanageable, unscalable task.
When it comes to large, complex, industrial processes, even small improvements in operating performance can yield significant returns to the bottom line. Without the right framework, finding areas for improvement is like searching for "a needle in a haystack". Pattern Discovery Technology's Production Intelligence solutions unlock valuable information hidden in process data, providing unprecedented opportunities for improved plant performance.
