Effective Decision Support in Near-Real Time

INDUSTRY VIEW

by Allen Avery, AutomationWorld.com

With increased data throughput and higher data resolutions, historians have also become a foundation for plant asset management initiatives, thanks to new visibility and trending tools. Today’s historians also support techniques, such as complex event processing, which can analyze multiple streams of plant data in real time to identify and diagnose emerging problems before they disrupt the production process in the plant, or negatively affect smart grid or other distributed assets.

Recent product advances increase historian data throughput, solution scalability, compatibility and connectivity with plant systems and third-party solutions. They also provide powerful visualization and analytical tools. These allow users to access and leverage huge volumes of plant data in near real time. Historians can collect and display real-time data and events, giving users a more comprehensive view of what is happening in a plant or distributed assets. Historian suppliers have worked to offer improved data access and visibility tools with their solutions. Many offer Web-based, thin-client access to historians, and most offer access to historian data via mobile devices. Powerful trending and graphics tools allow users to generate custom reports and charts to visualize plant data. Report