Since we’re nearing the end of vacation season, how many of you appreciate the digital transformation that has occurred over the years where you can quickly find the optimum transportation, lodging, meals, entertainment, etc. to make the most of your vacation. And how much faster can you do all these things than was possible even a few years ago?
Manufacturers and producers are also pursuing digital transformation initiatives. A common roadblock is data siloed in different locations which slows down the ability to make informed decisions quickly to improve performance. In this quick 4-minute video, Gaining Insight into Operational Performance to Optimize Production, Emerson’s Juan Panama explains how the Plantweb digital ecosystem breaks down data siloes so facilities can run harder, more reliably and safer. Data is collected and broken down to provide real-time insights into process status, facility health and to increase reliability.
Juan opens highlighting a few of the many sources of data including process data, monitoring data, lab and analyzer data. The Industrial Internet of Things technologies has enabled wireless sensors to be added to manage the overall health of the plant and equipment. The key is to break down the siloes where this data exists and bring them together to perform comprehensive analysis with operational analytics software to provide real-time insights into how the process is performing.
He describes Plantweb Optics Data Lake as a solution for an enterprise data store with flexibility for both structured and unstructured data, and contextualization to associate data with logical units. For example, in a refinery with changing crude oil slates, the challenge has been how maximize profitability, balance opportunity crudes with premium crudes, and continue to operate safely and reliably.
With Plantweb Optics Analytics, analysis can be performed on a broad spectrum of data to provide insights on the best way to achieve these objectives. Juan demonstrates this with an example showing a refinery site overview. With the data siloes broken down, the analytics can determine a corrosivity index. This index can help keep down corrosion levels to avoid unplanned outages and in the case of turnarounds, get back up and running much quicker by only having to inspect what is identified as an issue.
Juan shows a high corrosivity index alert in a fluid catalytic cracker (FCC) unit. The index is calculated from pressures, temperatures, and intrusive corrosion measurements to measure the pH of the fluid and combining with non-intrusive corrosion measurement data that measures the real-time piping wall thickness. This index is a leading indicator of overall plant health. Having this data available for real-time analysis and creating this leading indicator enables plant staff to run the facility harder yet safely and reliably.
Visit the Plantweb Optics Platform section on Emerson.com for more on these technologies and solutions to drive improvements in safety, reliability and overall efficiency.
