Representative End User Clients
Representative Automation Clients
Representative Software Clients
The OSIsoft User Conference in EMEA was held in Prague from October 13th, until October 15th, in Prague, Czech Republic. The conference is built around the mantra “People with Data can Transform the World”.
Surprisingly the record attendance of around 1000 people fitted easily in the location, contributing to the comfort of the attendees, who shared very openly their objectives, projects, challenges and results.
The opening keynotes were kicked off by Martin Otterson, who touched amongst others on bringing context to transform data into information and Cloud services to use existing infrastructure in the cloud. John de Koning of Shell Global Solutions, provided deep insight into Shell’s objectives, and approach to data, services and applications. In the current climate the company must increase asset reliability and integrity, reduce cost by delivering systems in a disciplined way to empower people using them. Shell needs to develop once and deploy many times by configuration. He explained how Shell standardized access to real time data world-wide to create efficiency in application development, maintenance and interfacing. Similar standardization was done for other data sources such as LIMS, SAP etc. A new generation of services is built on top of those data, to get transparent access to the data. In order to enable that, de Koning explained, a uniform data model is needed, describing the physical location, the unit, the equipment and the its characteristics using a standard hierarchy and naming convention. It requires to describe data model for cat crackers, heat exchangers, compressors, and so on. On top of the services layer, Shell built an application layer. These applications are for the end users, for example a wells toolkit, a condition based monitoring application, a production dashboard, etc. The three layers together make up the Smart Solutions Platform. How does Shell transform its business with this platform? The company aims to increase its maturity in using data gradually over time. Transparent availability of real time data is the foundation. This allows building surveillance centers enabling experts to support the operations by equipment type (e.g. compressors) or activity type (e.g. drilling), and from there to develop proactive monitoring and ultimately going to model-based predictive and prescriptive analytics. Mr. de Koning stressed that standardization and structure are the basis, but that the culture change to ensure the organization uses the new ways of working is at least as important.
Many presentations followed. Outotec reported on the usage of PI Cloud Connect to provide Industrial IoT based services to owner-operators using the company’s processes. We will report soon in more detail on this fascinating use case. Mr. Quintero of CEMEX reported how he reduced the time needed to create analytics reports based on data of seventy plants from over 700 hours to 5 minutes using the PI Integrator for Business Analytics. Many more users shared tricks, ideas, strategies, architectures, experiences and benefits, and we encourage readers to browse through the presentations once they become available online and benefit from them.
Several presentations reported about the use of real-time KPI’s for performance monitoring and performance management. ARC promotes real-time performance management (RPM) and the fact that industry increasingly implements it hopefully encourages others to do the same. We believe that companies should consider applying high-performance human-machine interfaces (HP-HMI), to make sure their operator screens are easy to interpret and operator actions become more appropriate and effective.
A highlight of the second day was the presentation by Antonio Buendia of Novartis Pharma, who gave an update on his journey towards his “Factory of the Future” that we have reported about before. New aspects were his design of a global data model that includes both a process view and an asset view. The asset view is similar to the data model discussed by Mr. Koning however it also includes a process view, based on the ISA-88 standard – to include process context providing meaning to associated data. Mr. Buendia uses a “federated” data storage approach, where global visibility of local instances of data provides global visibility. ARC supports this view, that is the closest as one can get to a ‘single version of the truth” in a lean manner. Mr. Buendia detailed how different users, from operator to upper management, are impacted by the operational objectives, and how the application provides support for their tasks. Operational objectives are:
We will continue to report about the Novartis journey.
The third day included a site visit to the operator of the Czech electrical grid, ČEPS. The operator faces the challenge to manage important flows entering from the North, and leaving the country on the South side, while maintaining stability of the national grid. The national grid has part of the generators connected to the transmission grid, while remaining installations including a growing share of renewables are connected to the distribution grid. Most substations are controlled from the central control room, with a video wall common to the grid and market operators, and their supervisor. The OSIsoft PI System enables ČEPS to visualize critical parameters for load frequency control, in particular fast data from so-called phase measure units (PMU’s), distributed across the grid, as well as information for voltage and reactive power control. The graphics enable the operator to follow how real-time parameters evolve over time in an irregular shaped space between limits to operate within, in order to maintain grid stability and avoid black-outs.
Many more users shared best practices, ideas, strategies, architectures, experiences and benefits, and we encourage readers to browse through the presentations and benefit from them. Select events starting with “2015 – EMEA” in the Event field on the following page to see the presentations.
Keywords: Data Model for Operational Intelligence, Smart Solutions Platform, Connected Services, Operational and Business Analytics, Real-time Performance Management, High-Performance HMI, Factory-of-the-Future, distributed operational data management
Companies mentioned: CEMEX, ČEPS, Novartis, Outotec, OSIsoft, Shell Global Solutions
Surprisingly the record attendance of around 1000 people fitted easily in the location, contributing to the comfort of the attendees, who shared very openly their objectives, projects, challenges and results.
The opening keynotes were kicked off by Martin Otterson, who touched amongst others on bringing context to transform data into information and Cloud services to use existing infrastructure in the cloud. John de Koning of Shell Global Solutions, provided deep insight into Shell’s objectives, and approach to data, services and applications. In the current climate the company must increase asset reliability and integrity, reduce cost by delivering systems in a disciplined way to empower people using them. Shell needs to develop once and deploy many times by configuration. He explained how Shell standardized access to real time data world-wide to create efficiency in application development, maintenance and interfacing. Similar standardization was done for other data sources such as LIMS, SAP etc. A new generation of services is built on top of those data, to get transparent access to the data. In order to enable that, de Koning explained, a uniform data model is needed, describing the physical location, the unit, the equipment and the its characteristics using a standard hierarchy and naming convention. It requires to describe data model for cat crackers, heat exchangers, compressors, and so on. On top of the services layer, Shell built an application layer. These applications are for the end users, for example a wells toolkit, a condition based monitoring application, a production dashboard, etc. The three layers together make up the Smart Solutions Platform. How does Shell transform its business with this platform? The company aims to increase its maturity in using data gradually over time. Transparent availability of real time data is the foundation. This allows building surveillance centers enabling experts to support the operations by equipment type (e.g. compressors) or activity type (e.g. drilling), and from there to develop proactive monitoring and ultimately going to model-based predictive and prescriptive analytics. Mr. de Koning stressed that standardization and structure are the basis, but that the culture change to ensure the organization uses the new ways of working is at least as important.
Many presentations followed. Outotec reported on the usage of PI Cloud Connect to provide Industrial IoT based services to owner-operators using the company’s processes. We will report soon in more detail on this fascinating use case. Mr. Quintero of CEMEX reported how he reduced the time needed to create analytics reports based on data of seventy plants from over 700 hours to 5 minutes using the PI Integrator for Business Analytics. Many more users shared tricks, ideas, strategies, architectures, experiences and benefits, and we encourage readers to browse through the presentations once they become available online and benefit from them.
Several presentations reported about the use of real-time KPI’s for performance monitoring and performance management. ARC promotes real-time performance management (RPM) and the fact that industry increasingly implements it hopefully encourages others to do the same. We believe that companies should consider applying high-performance human-machine interfaces (HP-HMI), to make sure their operator screens are easy to interpret and operator actions become more appropriate and effective.
A highlight of the second day was the presentation by Antonio Buendia of Novartis Pharma, who gave an update on his journey towards his “Factory of the Future” that we have reported about before. New aspects were his design of a global data model that includes both a process view and an asset view. The asset view is similar to the data model discussed by Mr. Koning however it also includes a process view, based on the ISA-88 standard – to include process context providing meaning to associated data. Mr. Buendia uses a “federated” data storage approach, where global visibility of local instances of data provides global visibility. ARC supports this view, that is the closest as one can get to a ‘single version of the truth” in a lean manner. Mr. Buendia detailed how different users, from operator to upper management, are impacted by the operational objectives, and how the application provides support for their tasks. Operational objectives are:
- increasing overall equipment effectiveness (OEE),
- providing product and (critical) process (parameter) visibility
- quality insurance of products by applying automatic in-process controls and of product data integrity
We will continue to report about the Novartis journey.
The third day included a site visit to the operator of the Czech electrical grid, ČEPS. The operator faces the challenge to manage important flows entering from the North, and leaving the country on the South side, while maintaining stability of the national grid. The national grid has part of the generators connected to the transmission grid, while remaining installations including a growing share of renewables are connected to the distribution grid. Most substations are controlled from the central control room, with a video wall common to the grid and market operators, and their supervisor. The OSIsoft PI System enables ČEPS to visualize critical parameters for load frequency control, in particular fast data from so-called phase measure units (PMU’s), distributed across the grid, as well as information for voltage and reactive power control. The graphics enable the operator to follow how real-time parameters evolve over time in an irregular shaped space between limits to operate within, in order to maintain grid stability and avoid black-outs.
Many more users shared best practices, ideas, strategies, architectures, experiences and benefits, and we encourage readers to browse through the presentations and benefit from them. Select events starting with “2015 – EMEA” in the Event field on the following page to see the presentations.
Keywords: Data Model for Operational Intelligence, Smart Solutions Platform, Connected Services, Operational and Business Analytics, Real-time Performance Management, High-Performance HMI, Factory-of-the-Future, distributed operational data management
Companies mentioned: CEMEX, ČEPS, Novartis, Outotec, OSIsoft, Shell Global Solutions