Comparing Facilities Using PI Data

Companies are always faced with the question: where within Operations should Management focus its attention? The answer may be difficult to determine when there are many far-flung facilities that operate independently. It is not just which facilities make the biggest or smallest profit, but which facilities can make the biggest improvement in their operations. Additionally, are there issues that are common to all facilities that must be addressed at the corporate level? Omicron is often called in to help companies organize and analyze their wealth of PI data to create better, more consistent results across operations.

Omicron helps OSIsoft PI customers build worldwide comparative statistics.

Most commonly, clients wish to generate comparative statistics for the current time period (day, week, month, year) and be able to view the results for previous time periods. When there are only a few facilities to compare, the PI product suite may prove adequate. Creating an adequate snapshot when there are dozens of facilities to be compared, however, is more complex. SharePoint's tabular and graphic display capabilities generally prove to be better suited to the task.

A typical situation is an Omicron client with more than 50 independent plants scattered across four continents. Operations Management had already retained Omicron to create a means for its field engineers to prioritize and manage events and conditions reported by PI at each facility (similar to the case study, Monitoring Unmanned Facilities). Omicron's approach was to use SQL Server and SharePoint to create the consistent structures needed for reliable analysis. Adding new corporate-wide summaries as a new level on top of the detail gives the client a quick and easy view to the commonalities and differences in issues facing the plants. Operations management is able to view the plants' summary event data by numerous criteria including priority, type, process area, cause and time to close. Such data series can also be presented in tabular form with the ability to drill down to the appropriate level of detail.

Omicron's customers depend on us to reduce complexity, slash maintenance, improve reliability and enhance reporting. Our experienced PI and SharePoint team has dealt with many situations similar to this over more than 20 years.