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The Relationship Between Loop Performance Monitoring and Loop Tuning
Imagine that you just purchased software to help with the tuning of your plant’s control loops. You’re ready to enhance control and to improve production throughput and efficiency, right? With software successfully installed you consider the 100s if not 1000s of PID controllers regulating your facility’s processes. A question now comes into focus: Where do you start?
Read MoreHow to Model a PID Loop
As stated in a previous post, tuning PID controllers is a multi-step process. After you gather your data from your step test, the next step in the process is fitting a model to your Process Data. Fitting a model involves the analysis of bump test data and the calculation of tuning parameters that are specific to both your controller and your control objective. This post highlights some industry best practices for fitting a model to your test data.
Read MoreWhat Should I Look for in Performance Monitoring Software?
You’ve probably heard it referred to as Control Loop Performance Monitoring, Loop Performance Monitoring, Controller Performance Monitoring, or even just Monitoring software. The long list of names aside, the technology is relatively new and it addresses a need shared by most manufacturers. That need is for improved awareness of issues negatively affecting a plant’s control loop performance. The benefits of these monitoring tools range from increases in production output and quality to reductions in energy consumption and waste. While more and more of PID controller monitoring technologies are popping up the question remains: What’s needed in Control Loop Performance Monitoring solution?
Read MoreHow to Perform a Step Test
Tuning PID controllers is a multi-step process. While it is important to understand each step in the process, performing the bump test and collecting dynamic data is the most crucial step that generally dictates the outcome. This post delves into one particular type of test – the Step Test – before introducing other tests commonly used in PID controller tuning.
Read MoreAccelerating Start-Up, Optimizing PID Control
Control Station has been fortunate to partner with leading, global OEMs like Yokogawa. Award-winning products like csTuner are helping process manufacturers at all stages of operation. As GranBio in Brazil recently shared, csTuner is especially valuable during start-up when highly variable process conditions are the norm and quickly establishing safe, stable operations is the objective. Our portfolio of PID tuning products are the only ones consistently proven to handle those complex dynamics – what engineers know as the ‘real-world’.
Read MoreWhen Profits Are Hidden in Plain Sight
If you drive a car, then you probably benefit from McGard’s products. Their proprietary lug nuts keep automobile tires where they belong – on your car. In fact, McGard is the nation’s leading manufacturer of mechanical anti-theft devices. When market demand outpaced McGard’s production capacity they focused their attention on existing production lines. With the help of PlantESP the engineering team at McGard successfully tapped into opportunities that had been seemingly hidden in plain sight.
Read MoreIs the Harris Index Right for Your Loop Assessment Needs?
Predicting the weather is difficult – just ask a meteorologist. Even with the help of advanced analytics few seem to get it right with consistency – just ask any parent who has dealt with an unplanned snow day. In addition to more advanced tools meteorologists rely on basic measures such as Temperature, Wind Speed, and Atmospheric Pressure. Their continued reliance on these simpler metrics provides food for thought.
Read MoreWhat is the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)?
If you’ve investigated manufacturing trends recently, then the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has probably caught your attention once or twice. IIoT capitalizes on a range of communication and automation technologies that have been applied in industrial applications for years. With its primary focus on the supply chain and enhancing efficiency, however, IIoT often leaves production staff wondering how plant floor operations will be impacted.
Read MoreData Collection Speed is Key to the Accurate Interpretation of Process Dynamics
If you’re old enough to remember silent movies, then you know what it’s like to see the characters seemingly jiggle around the screen. Black spots would randomly appear as the story was told with the help of subtitles. Spots and subtitles aside, these movies appeared jittery due to their slow speed. The slow frame rate – a precursor of data collection speed – resulted in visual gaps.
Read MoreUsing Percent Time in Normal to Uncover Tuning Issues
Even Simple Metrics Such as Percent Time in Normal Reveal Issues that Negatively Affect Performance and Signal the Need for Controller Tuning
It’s easy to get tripped up if a shoelace is untied. Just ask any child. While that’s a lesson most learn early in their lives each of us can occasionally slip up and find ourselves at risk.
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