Introduction

Process+ offers an effective online solution to identify and monitor poorly performing control loops.

With ever-increasing competition and pressure, it is essential for plant control loops to function optimally. Process+ assists with analyzing the performance of control loops and control elements.

This process monitoring system assists plant management to prioritize control systems that make the biggest economic impact on the company's bottom line. To do this, Process+ is also used to benchmark control loop performance for comparative analysis between loops in the plant. Engineers should establish a benchmark of metrics for a plant, or even just a group of loops, these benchmark settings could then be used to direct the efforts of plant personnel to first optimize the loops that affect the operation to the greatest extent. Benchmark settings would also enable comparison over time, showing the results of how effort and money spent have influenced the plant operation from an economic point of view.

As such, Process+ is integral to a plant's control base layer operations, and is used to measure process values as a first step in optimizing the performance of a process. Data is recorded from either historical or real-time data sources, using the seamless integration with OPC and Historians. Control Loop KPIs are calculated from these measured values, and made available to all who need to monitor the performance of the control loops.

Process+ connects directly to the control system via OPC clients to monitor the performance of the control loops and control elements. These provide direct measurements of important process variables for control loop monitoring. They also provide measurements used for control element analysis, such as the control element oscillation rate and the movement index, indicating problems such as poor control element sizing, failed control, and hysteresis.

Process+ also assists with controller analysis, recording how much time the loop performs out of specification. This is in terms of both out of limits percentages, and the percentage of time the controller operates in each different control mode, such as manual, automatic or shutdown mode.