Decisions and Data: How and Where to Start
Mike Wagner, Wonderware North
Decisions! People make them every day, but what is a decision? Is it a judgment, a conclusion, or is it the act of making up one’s mind? For a person to make a decision, they need the facts, otherwise known as data. Where does one get this data? Well, it depends upon what they are making the decision on or about. Let’s look at some decisions that people make every day:
I’m going downtown to the stadium tonight for the game. What time should I leave?
I need to head over to the other side of the state for a business trip. Do I have enough gas in the car to get there?
Personal experience can answer both of these questions, but it boils down to the data; Is it a workday with more traffic? What route am I taking? How much gas do I have in the car now? How many miles can I get on a full tank? Once you have that data, you can make clear decisions.
How about decisions in your manufacturing facility? It doesn’t matter if you make widgets, fabric softener, clean water, hand sanitizer, electricity, or mining for material. The same parameters apply – for you to make credible decisions, you need information. You need data to understand what is happening in your facility.
I’ve been in the AVEVA/Wonderware family for almost 30 years, and in that time, there is one product that makes sense! It’s a product that helps you make decisions. Why? Because it provides you the data you want and need. And what did we say data will get you? Information. And once you have information, you can make those credible decisions in real-time.
The product I’m talking about is AVEVA Historian.
Let’s take a look at some of the decisions AVEVA Historian can help with:
- How much product did we produce on each shift today?
- What was the peak temperature during each of my batches for today?
- How many widgets have we produced on Line 1 this week?
- What are the average turbidity and chlorine levels in our water today?
- How much product have we mined this month?
- How many hours has each of my pumps been running?
- What is the cycle time of my equipment or batches?
AVEVA Historian is designed to collect and store all your data or a subset of your data. It is effortless to configure and can collect data from almost any source in and around your facility. Once the data is collected, numerous retrieval methods can be used to query the data, independent of how the data is stored. An example of just some of the retrieval methods are:
- Analog Summary: Provides the ability to retrieve Time-weighted Average, Standard Deviation, Minimum and Maximum values – and these values will undoubtedly help you understand what your peak temperature was during production.
- Counter: Using Counter retrieval, it is straightforward to calculate production rates which will certainly help you with line, shift, daily, and monthly production totals.
- Round Trip: Using Round Trip retrieval, it’s easy to analyze cycle time between events which can help you understand the length of time for various batches or the times that pumps are cycling on/off at remote waste-water lift stations.
- Integral: Using the powerful Integral retrieval method, it is easy to convert a flow rate into total flow so you can determine how much water, gas, vinegar, or chlorine has been used or consumed.
These are only some of the powerful retrieval methods built into AVEVA Historian that can help you analyze your data. When it’s time to make decisions, you’ll be making them based on credible and reliable information. Take a look at AVEVA Historian for your data needs and contact us if you have any questions about data collection, retrieval, and reporting needs.
