Control Station Unveils System Health Monitoring Service for Enhanced Operational Efficiency

Control Station, a plantwide control optimization solutions provider, has launched its new System Health Monitoring service. The service is set to provide industry-spanning operational insights to manufacturers so they can quickly respond to issues affecting system performance and proactively manage plants.

Leveraging the intelligence gathered from the Control Station's PlantESP Loop Performance Monitoring solution, the System Health Monitoring service assesses the performance of PID controllers on both plantwide and enterprise levels by analyzing the facility's existing process data. With the new service, unplanned downtime can be prevented by uncovering common mechanical faults, issues with process interaction, and tuning problems that would otherwise affect productivity.

Control Station's System Health Monitoring service provides companies with operational insights to enhance production efficiency. Image used courtesy of Adobe Stock

System Health Monitoring

Offering a tiered monitoring approach for PlantESP Loop Performance Monitoring solution deployments, the new System Health Monitoring (SHM) service allows for ongoing evaluation of system resource health while providing guidance to ensure regulatory control and optimal performance. The SHM service allows continuous tracking of server health status, access to essential databases, and engine performance calculations, ensuring peak efficiency operation for key resources.

Additionally, Control Station's new solution includes infrastructure analysis, which identifies misconfigured or invalid tags and loops, documents "dead loops," and keeps track of available servers and hard drive space for databases. With this insight, users can maintain the functionality of their systems and address issues with misconfigurations before they affect production.

One of the standout features of the SHM service is the overall controller effectiveness (OCE) metric. The metric provides a simple, quantitative measure for assessing the effectiveness of the control loops within a plant. Drawing on techniques comparable to those used for determining the overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), OCE offers a comprehensive approach for manufacturers to benchmark performance, make informed decisions, and track improvements for enhanced efficiency in production.

SHM service utilizes the Control Station's PlantESP Loop Performance Monitoring solution. Image used courtesy of Control Station

Enhancing Plant Performance

SHM not only helps users detect issues affecting controller performance but also simplifies the process of root cause isolation. Subscribers to the new service are set to receive scorecards complete with a prioritized list of tasks and recommendations for targeting issues in PID control to impact performance and control positively.

As Jonathan Stevens, Director of Services at Control Station, explained, the SHM service, from a regulatory approach, benchmarks the overall effectiveness of a plant, prioritizing a list of tasks. He added that the new solution provides licensees with a simple way to measure the positive impact of every modification in the plant's operation.

According to Dr. Bob Rice, Vice President of Engineering at Control Station, who emphasized the value of the OCE metric, the SHM service tackles the challenge of measuring the impact process engineering and operation teams have on the performance and the control of the plant. With industry-wide benchmarking, manufacturers can compare their plant's performance with others, giving them insight into their position in the wide manufacturing landscape.

The Overall Control Effectiveness (OCE) metric provides users with plantwide PID performance data. Image used courtesy of Control Station

Data Privacy and Security

When it comes to the security and privacy of data collected through SHM, Control Station strives to ensure that only aggregated values of the software's metric calculations are transmitted. The company's solution also ensures that customers' privacy is protected by anonymizing the comparisons made during SHM assessment and that no proprietary data is transmitted.

With the growing need for system health monitoring, solutions like Control Station's SHM services and insights through OCE metrics allow manufacturers to make informed decisions for the performance optimization of their plants. Monitoring over 23,000 unique PID control loops, the SHM service seeks to generate value for manufacturers across the globe.