Installing a True Plant Historian

 

Part of the power of any SCADA system is the data that is exposed by accurately and efficiently monitoring and logging plant floor information.  This data, is only of value, however,  if it can be easily correlated to manufacturing events (start of batch, system alarms, etc.) and only if this correlated data can be easily extracted and distributed to plant personnel in the form of easy to configure and manage reports.  Unfortunately, this is where most SCADA trending and logging packages fall short.  These systems typically provide rudimentary repositories into which data is logged and often do not provide a means to reconcile time based and discrete events within the same system.  Additionally, generating reports from such systems requires custom programming and still does not result in the kind of granular and flexible analyses that is typically needed to drive intelligent decisions.  To truly provide this kind of functionality, users need a relational database application that can log discrete and time based events at the volume and speed necessary for manufacturing systems. They also need client tools that easily allow users to create reports from this data and get the reports to those that need the information to make key manufacturing decisions.

 

The kinds of products described above are referred to as plant historians and are often too expensive and complex for many companies to purchase, set up and run.  Additionally, the cost and effort involved in creating, distributing and updating reports from such systems is often unmanageable and beyond the means of most in-house engineering groups that are often times stretched to capacity with daily plant issues.  Most plant engineers recognize that this kind of information would be of extreme value but the cost of the software and effort to configure this software are not something that they can easily justify.  If this scenario rings true for you or your company, you may want to learn more about the Wonderware Historian and ActiveFactory reporting and analysis tools.  The Wonderware Historian is the worlds largest selling and easiest to configure plant historian and unlike its competition, is extremely cost effective.  Combined with the ActiveFactory client tools for reporting, the Wonderware Historian can easily provide this type of "Plant Intelligence" for a fraction of the cost and effort required by any of its competition.

 

Q-mation application specialists and system integrators routinely install and set up Wonderware Historian systems in less than half a day with minimal effort.  At the end of this time, customers immediately begin logging plant data (discrete, analog and manual entry) to the most powerful and flexible plant historian on the market.  Using the ActiveFactory Client tools, users can immediately start to use standard analysis reports or create custom reports against this data that can be printed, e-mailed or delivered via the Web to anyone within their company.  What's more, users can start small and expand the system over time as the need arises.  For the cost of a small SCADA node, an organization can begin logging and reporting the data that is critical for making intelligent real-time manufacturing decisions in a true plant historian product.

 

The following is a set of criteria that can be used to evaluate your company's need for the Wonderware Historian and ActiveFactory.  These criteria can be used to determine your satisfaction with your current logging and reporting methods or to determine if a historian/reporting solution could be of benefit to your company.  If you answer YES to any of the below questions, we encourage you to contact us for a presentation of the Wonderware Historian and ActiveFactory.

1. Does your current system/methodology meet your needs for data retrieval? 

2. Is your data immediately available for detailed analysis?  In what form - trends, tabular, ad hoc queries?

3. Would it be useful to have your raw process data automatically summarized - e.g., hourly, shift, weekly Min, Max, Averages?

4. Would desktop tools such as MS Excel, Word, Access or a Web Browser be a useful way to instantly retrieve and report the data?

5. Would it be useful to display more than 8 pens (tags) on an InTouch historical or realtime trend?

6. Would it be beneficial to relate the detailed process data with production data, and alarms and events data?

7. Would it be useful to be able to add notes to the stored data, and view those annotations from any reporting tool?

8. Would it be beneficial to have “external” data (Quality data, manually input data, etc) stored with the process data for later correlation and reporting?

9. Do you have multiple InTouch nodes logging data, and is the data easy to manage - i.e., is it in one location for all logging nodes, are the data files of a manageable size, can the data be easily archived and restored?

10. Would it be beneficial for tags to be stored a different data resolutions - e.g., some data cyclically at 1 sec, some cyclically at 30 sec, some data delta stored with no deadband, some data delta stored with a 5% EU deadband, etc?  Some data temporarily not be stored?

11. Is it important to be able to quickly retrieve large amounts of data over a large time period - e.g., 18 months?

12. Is your data secure?  Is it important to prevent unauthorized access to data?

Again, answering YES to any of the above means that the Wonderware Historian/ActiveFactory Solution could be of great benefit to your company.  Additionally, implementing this solution is fast, cost effective and easy.  If you are interested in learning more about these products, please call us for a more detailed demonstration.  Challenge us to prove that implementing a true plant historian at your facility can be done with the ease described above.  Q-mation can have you logging information and creating powerful reports in almost no time.