Data historians now provide effective decision support in near real-time.
Plant data historians are moving beyond their traditional role as a tool to collect and archive data to better understand past plant performance, to become a powerful tool that can be used to help improve real-time operations. With increased data throughput and higher data resolutions, historians have also become a foundation for plant asset management initiatives, thanks to new visibility and trending tools. Today’s historians also support techniques, such as complex event processing, which can analyse multiple streams of plant data in real-time to identify and diagnose emerging problems before they disrupt the production process in the plant, or negatively affect smart grid or other distributed assets.
Plant historians get enhanced functionality
Recent product advances increase historian data throughput, solution scalability, compatibility, and connectivity with plant systems and third-party solutions, and provide powerful visualisation and analytical tools. These allow users to access and leverage huge volumes of plant data in near real-time. Historians can collect and display real-time data and events, giving users a more comprehensive view of what is happening in a plant or distributed assets. Powerful processing capabilities, coupled with advanced software algorithms, have changed how historians are used. Historians are transitioning from their traditional role as plant record-keepers and planners, to tools that can have a positive impact on plant operations in real-time.
With recent advances in computing technology, including 64-bit processing architectures, historians can collect and store large amounts of plant and process information; many can archive up to several exabytes of data. Many can simultaneously store and retrieve plant data, giving users an up-to-the-minute view of plant performance. Today’s historians can handle hundreds of thousands of discrete events per second, so real-time plant data is available almost immediately for analysis. Modern computing power has enhanced historians to such a degree that rather than just being used to look back on plant performance, they can be used to predict and positively impact future performance.
The use of de facto standards and environments, such as OPC and Microsoft .NET, allows easier interfacing between systems and different historians. This helps users leverage existing historian data, even if they choose a new solution from a different vendor. OPC compatibility also enables easy access to and use of data from HMI, DCS, CMMS, and other plant-level applications. Since suppliers are also beginning to offer OPC-UA compliant products, historian data is now also readily available to applications running on non-Microsoft platforms. In addition to plant-level equipment, historians also interface well with EAM, ERP, and advanced optimisation applications.
Historian suppliers have worked to offer improved data access and visibility tools with their solutions. Many offer web-based, thin client access to historians, and most offer access to historian data via mobile devices. Powerful trending and graphics tools allow users to generate custom reports and charts to visualise plant data. Suppliers have also emphasised ease of use and configuration in their product development. Users can easily create custom interfaces and role-based dashboards to view and manipulate historian data.
Due to their high data capture rates, today’s historians can act as a foundation for plant asset management programmes. The ability to store, access, and analyse plant data in near real-time can help users identify any anomalies or troubling performance trends that could indicate a problem with plant production equipment. Historical data can be used to develop models or profiles that help users determine how a given asset should behave under normal conditions, and to set alarms or formulate maintenance strategies to balance production needs with asset viability, remotely and in real-time.
Coming soon: Complex event processing
Though in its infancy, complex event processing is another technology that can harness the capabilities of plant historians. Historians can be used to complement and augment complex event processing, a technology that can analyse multiple incoming streams of data in near real-time. When viewed individually, these streams might mean little. But when viewed simultaneously and in context, they could help identify process or plant equipment problems using advanced data filtering and algorithms.
For more information contact Larry O’Brien, ARC Advisory Group, (+1) 781 471 1126, lobrien@arcweb.com, www.arcweb.com
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