DETERMINING ASSOCIATIONS AND ALIGNMENTS OF PROCESS ELEMENTS AND MEASUREMENTS IN A PROCESS
First Claim
1. A method for determining sources of variations of behaviors of process elements used in a process plant to control a process, the method comprising:
- receiving, at the one or more computing devices, an indication of a target process element included in the plurality of process elements;
defining, by one or more computing devices and based on a plurality of diagrams of the process or of the process plant, at least a portion of a process element alignment map corresponding to a plurality of process elements used in the process plant to control the process;
determining, by the one or more computing devices and based on the at least the portion of the process element alignment map, an upstream set of process elements corresponding to the target process element;
providing, by the one or more computing devices, indications of the upstream set of process elements to a data analysis to determine a respective strength of an impact of each upstream process element on a behavior of the target process element, wherein a set of inputs to the data analysis includes the indications of the upstream set of process elements and excludes any user-generated input;
determining, by the one or more computing devices and based on the respective strengths of impacts of the upstream set of process elements, at least a subset of the upstream set of process elements to be one or more sources of a variation in the behavior of the target process element; and
causing, by the one or more computing devices, an indication of the one or more sources of the variation in the behavior of the target process element to be provided to a recipient application, the recipient application being a user interface application or another application.
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Accused Products
Abstract
Techniques for automatically determining, without user input, one or more sources of a variation in the behavior of a target process element operating to control a process in a process plant include using a process element alignment map to determine process elements upstream of the target process element in the process; performing a data analysis on data corresponding to the upstream elements with respect to the target element to determine behavior time offsets, strengths of impact, and impact delays; and determining the source(s) based on the data analysis outputs. Techniques may include automatically defining the process element alignment map by obtaining and processing data from a plurality of diagrams or data sources of the process and/or plant. Furthermore, the techniques may be performed during plant run-time by any high-volume, high density device such as centralized or embedded big data appliances, controllers, field or I/O devices, and/or by an unsupervised application.
83 Citations
56 Claims
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1. A method for determining sources of variations of behaviors of process elements used in a process plant to control a process, the method comprising:
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receiving, at the one or more computing devices, an indication of a target process element included in the plurality of process elements; defining, by one or more computing devices and based on a plurality of diagrams of the process or of the process plant, at least a portion of a process element alignment map corresponding to a plurality of process elements used in the process plant to control the process; determining, by the one or more computing devices and based on the at least the portion of the process element alignment map, an upstream set of process elements corresponding to the target process element; providing, by the one or more computing devices, indications of the upstream set of process elements to a data analysis to determine a respective strength of an impact of each upstream process element on a behavior of the target process element, wherein a set of inputs to the data analysis includes the indications of the upstream set of process elements and excludes any user-generated input; determining, by the one or more computing devices and based on the respective strengths of impacts of the upstream set of process elements, at least a subset of the upstream set of process elements to be one or more sources of a variation in the behavior of the target process element; and causing, by the one or more computing devices, an indication of the one or more sources of the variation in the behavior of the target process element to be provided to a recipient application, the recipient application being a user interface application or another application. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18)
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19. An apparatus for automatically determining a process element alignment map of a plurality of process elements used to control at least a portion of a process in a process plant, the apparatus comprising:
one or more tangible, non-transitory, computer-readable storage media storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the apparatus to; obtain a set of data from a plurality of data sources storing data descriptive of the plurality of the process elements, the obtained set of data including, for each of the plurality of process elements, a respective identification of the each process element and an indication of a respective physical location of the each process element in the process plant, and the plurality of process elements including a plurality of devices, a plurality of process variables, and a plurality of measurements used to control the process; and determine, based on the obtained set of data, the process element alignment map, the process element alignment map indicating, for each process element included in the plurality of process elements, the respective identification of the each process element and an indication of a respective order of an occurrence of a respective event at the each process element to control the process relative to an occurrence of a respective event at at least one other process element to control the process. - View Dependent Claims (20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37)
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38. An apparatus for automatically determining sources of a variation of a behavior of a target process element used in a process plant to control a process, the apparatus comprising:
one or more tangible, non-transitory, computer-readable storage media storing computer-executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the apparatus to; receive an indication of the target process element, the target process element included in a plurality of process elements used in the process plant to control the process, and the plurality of process elements including a plurality of devices, a plurality of process variables, and a plurality of measurements; determine, using at least a portion of a process element alignment map, a subset of the plurality of process elements that are upstream of the target process element, the process alignment map indicating, for each process element included in the plurality of process elements, a respective identifier of the each process element and an indication of a respective order of an occurrence of a respective event at the each process element to control the process relative to an occurrence of a respective event at at least one other process element to control the process, the subset of the plurality of process elements that are upstream of the target process element being a set of upstream process elements, and each upstream process element having a respective order in the process element alignment map that is ahead of or adjacent to the respective order of the target process element in the process element alignment map; cause the set of upstream process elements to be used in a data analysis to determine, for each upstream process element, a respective impact delay, the respective impact delay corresponding to a time offset from a time at which a particular event occurs at the each upstream process element to a time at which a change in the behavior of the target process element resulting from the occurrence of the particular event at the each upstream process element occurs; and cause at least a portion of the set of upstream process elements to be indicated, to a recipient application, as one or more sources of the variation of the behavior of the target process element, the at least a portion of the set of upstream process elements determined based on the respective impact delays of the upstream process elements. - View Dependent Claims (39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56)
Specification