Product category:
Plantwide control
News Release from: ExperTune | Subject: PlantTriage
Edited by the Engineeringtalk Editorial
Team on 27 March 2006
Performance supervision system wins US
Patent
The US Patent Office has issued a patent for control loop performance to ExperTune.
The US Patent Office has issued a patent for control loop performance to ExperTune ExperTune has invented methods and programs to calculate overall control loop performance based on process, control and economic measures
This article was originally published on Engineeringtalk on 27 Apr 2007 at 8.00am (UK)
Related stories
Software assess plant performance
ExperTune's PlantTriage 7.0 software gives companies a global view of plant performance and process control assets.
Performance supervision system guarantees payback
ExperTune is so confident that PlantTriage delivers bottom-line results that it will provide software and services for free, in exchange for a share of the savings.
This patented technology is a core component of ExperTune's PlantTriage performance supervision system.
US Patent 6,993,396 was awarded to John Gerry, President and founder of ExperTune.
PlantTriage gathers data from the control system, performs a series of numerical assessments, then combines them with economic data to provide a dimensionless measure of control loop performance, or "control loop health".
Further reading
Process interaction mapping reveals all
PlantTriage performance supervision software now includes a simple colour-coded interaction map.
Performance supervision software feeds back
PlantTriage performance supervision software now includes a simple, text message diagnosis for every loop in the plant.
Using this single number, process plant personnel can prioritise process improvement efforts and maintenance activities.
Control loop health can be customised at each plant site to emphasise those measures of performance that relate to the business strategy.
For example, one site may emphasise a reduction in oscillation and variability, while another may focus on alarm rates, maintaining loops in normal mode, and speed of control response to upsets.
These measures become customised key performance indicators, or KPIs.
John Gerry, President of ExperTune, says: "With PlantTriage, it is our goal to streamline the performance improvement process".
"The patented control loop performance metrics give our clients great insight into the performance of the process".
"Using these KPI's to maintain focus, our clients have been able to reduce energy costs, improve production rates, and stabilise process operations".
Within PlantTriage, control loop health is tracked, trended, and historised at the loop, unit, plant, and site levels.
Web-based visualisation tools display the information in a colourful, graphical, and intuitive manner.
Drill-down capabilities are used to drive analysis to root cause.
Integrated control loop optimisation and tuning tools ensure that problems can be solved quickly.
Control loop performance metrics and KPIs are receiving a great deal of attention in the process industry.
Without performance supervision in place, the vast warehouse of data that is available from a modern distributed control system can be overwhelming.
Focused, customised KPIs, such as the control loop health metric, help to make sense out of this data, and drive out specific actions to improve process performance.
The patented methods to determine control loop performance provide a way to streamline the data, and provide focus to improvement efforts.
According to Gerry: "With so many different pressures facing the process industries, a customised metric for control loop performance is crucial to achieving process performance results".
"Our clients have been very successful in applying this technology to their specific business environment, whether it is oil refining, pulp and paper production, mining, fine chemicals, pharmaceuticals, or other process industries".
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