Industry Articles

FEBRUARY 2016 – OPTIMIZING THE FUTURE BY LEVERAGING THE PAST

FEBRUARY 2016 – OPTIMIZING THE FUTURE BY LEVERAGING THE PAST

The data historian has evolved. Since its introduction in the 1980s, the historian has transitioned from a simple repository of production data to a treasure trove of operational and business…

APRIL 2016 – IIOT POISED TO DELIVER BETTER DATA

APRIL 2016 – IIOT POISED TO DELIVER BETTER DATA

Our President and CEO, Dennis Nash, was quoted in a recent magazine article. The article covers the up and coming Industrial Internet of Things(IIOT). Dennis provides insight on how IIOT…

JUNE 2016 – CLPM DELIVERING ON THE PROMISE OF PLANT-WIDE OPTIMIZATION

JUNE 2016 – CLPM: DELIVERING ON THE PROMISE OF PLANT-WIDE OPTIMIZATION

Petrochemical manufacturers experience unique challenges when it comes to maintaining effective regulatory control.  As practitioners know, the dynamics of petrochemical processes are complex.  From the volatility of batch reactions and…

AUGUST 2016 – HOW TO TUNE PID LOOPS TEMPERATURE CONTROL CHALLENGES

AUGUST 2016 – HOW TO TUNE PID LOOPS: TEMPERATURE CONTROL CHALLENGES

Temperature control applications can be broken into two main categories—fully continuous and semi-continuous (or batch).  An example of a fully continuous temperature controller is a shell-and-tube heat exchanger. In this…

AUGUST 2016 – OVERCOMING LOOP TUNING CHALLENGES

AUGUST 2016 – OVERCOMING LOOP TUNING CHALLENGES

For years, it was nessesary to steady a process before tuning software could be applied successfully. Because most industrial processes exhibit some degree of ocvillatory behavior, the steady-state tuning requirement…

JULY 2017 – PROCESS OPTIMISATION BIG DATA SHINES LIGHT ON CONTROLLER PERFORMANCE

JULY 2017 – PROCESS OPTIMISATION: BIG DATA SHINES LIGHT ON CONTROLLER PERFORMANCE

An engineer working at a corn milling production plant receives his daily report on specific opportunities to optimize the facility’s regulatory control systems. The facility is one of dozens owned…

FEBRUARY 2018 – THINK YOUVE GOT A LOT OF DATA THINK AGAIN

FEBRUARY 2018 – THINK YOU’VE GOT A LOT OF DATA? THINK AGAIN!

This article explores the data requirements that allow plant-wide monitoring and diagnostic technologies to accurately characterize changes in performance. In particular, it examines the requirements of key performance indices (KPIs)…

FEBRUARY 2018 – THE IMPORTANCE OF ‘GOOD DATA’ WHEN TUNING PID LOOPS

FEBRUARY 2018 – THE IMPORTANCE OF ‘GOOD DATA’ WHEN TUNING PID LOOPS

Ask technicians and engineers about manually tuning PIDs. Their responses usually fall into one of the three different groups: 1) Some who will say it’s a “dark art” and won’t…

FEBRUARY 2018 – THE LINK BETWEEN PID & RELIABILITY

FEBRUARY 2018 – THE LINK BETWEEN PID & RELIABILITY

It seems as though most discussions concerning condition-based maintenance quickly shift toward asset reliability and predictive analytics. There’s quite a bit of value to be gained from monitoring the health…