The Power of the Hear-See-Do Learning Method
There is an old proverb that goes: “If you test a fish on how well it climbs a tree, it will think it’s a failure.” While this proverb is often used in relation to traditional K-12 education, it stands true in just about any educational scenario... Read More
Dick Morley and the Story of the PLC
It’s been a few months since Dick Morley passed away. While a younger generation of engineers may be unfamiliar with Morley’s work, those that work in production environments are most certainly beneficiaries of his invention of the Programmable Logic Controller (PLC)... Read More
4 Reasons the OSI PI Data Historian is King of the Market
Data historians are a “must have” technology and among the automation market’s options the PI Historian from OSIsoft is the gold standard. OSIsoft has more-or-less led the historian market from its inception in 1980. The reason: OSI has continuously innovated to assure that the PI Historian is highly efficient and that it provides the preferred platform for higher value data... Read More
What Does Controller Output Reveal About FCE Health and Asset Reliability?
Remember the Far Side? Of course you do, but do you remember the one depicting the boy who leans his whole body forward as he pushes against a door that clearly reads “Pull”? Although the sign leading up to the building shows “Midvale School for the Gifted” this particular student doesn’t seem to get it. Any possibility of progress is blocked by a physical constraint... Read More
What Do I Need to Know About OSI’s Asset Framework?
Asset Framework from OSIsoft changes a manufacturer’s ability to extract value from plant data. It takes the seemingly infinite number of tags registered within the data historian and organizes them in an intelligent, hierarchical manner. This structure is increasingly valuable as plants apply sensor technologies to more and more equipment for the purpose of monitoring performance. Read More
What is the Moving Boxcar Method? How is Boxcar Averaging Applied to Control Loop Monitoring?
No surprise - advanced diagnostic tools like PlantESP constantly crunch data in order to uncover important trends and provide actionable insights. As the automation market’s leading controller performance monitoring solution PlantESP typically performs complex calculations on each PID control... Read More
What Effect Does Noise Have on Controller Tuning?
Noise – that random variation in your data signals – is seemingly everywhere. Low frequency process and high frequency signal noise are two sources that directly affect control. There’s no avoiding it. Indeed, when tuning PID controllers practitioners simply need to deal with it. As they say: It is what it is! Read More
What is a Micro-Historian?
News flash – the market for pneumatics has been marginalized significantly by digital control. And with data being increasingly central to the average plant’s day-to-day plant operations it’s no surprise that the market for data historians is growing. Without data the staff in operations, engineering, and maintenance would be hard pressed to control production either safely or profitably. Read More
What to Learn from a Plant’s Frequency Data
If you’re old enough to remember the Internet browser called Netscape, then you may remember the company’s CEO – Jim Barksdale – who once quipped: “If we have data, let’s look at data. If all we have is opinions, let’s go with mine.” Fortunately for those that come to this blog there’s typically sufficient amounts of data. That said, a question often raised relative to a plant’s process data is: What gems are hidden in it? Read More
