Vast quantities of process control information is collected on a timestamped basis in almost all processes where monitoring and measuring equipment is being used. It could be in an Oil Refinery, Plastic Extrusion, Hospitals etc

Typically the information that is being collected is simple (sometimes more than one reading is taken)

• Device ID
• Time of Reading
• Reading Value

The problem is then making sense of all of this information which in an Oil Refinery can be millions of value a day.

It requires the development of a model of the Facility which describes devices and relationships between devices to allow for navigation path’s.

Additionally, it requires the recording of expected values under various operating values such that actual’s can be compared on an ongoing basis.

Many process control operations will have operating tolerances and/or critical alarms built into the base equipment and this is not the purpose of this type of analytics.

Process control analytics is about reviewing the past to improve the future.

Manufacturing is about starting with a set of base material carrying out some form of process to create a set of finished products which are then sold.

These processes can be extremely complex and minor alterations of operating conditions can improve or reduce efficiency, reduce costs.

For an experienced engineer the ability to review thousands of data points in an interactive visual display in a familiar environment provides a powerful tool to optimize and monitor processes.

In your organization – go talk with the process engineers – what they use to extract data from the process control system, where and how they are doing the analysis.

Our view is that a large number of them will tell you (if you ask nicely) – Excel, and they probably won’t admit to how much time they spend and how much of a pain it is but there really is a better way.

Connecting Excel to data and providing world class data visualization capabilities to review large data points come into their own with process control.