Displaying a Plant’s Graphic Image: Genesis of ProcessBook

Small portion of a ProcessBook display for a plant. In the 1990's, Omicron was instrumental in conceiving how PI could be used to support engineers at any location in a plant. Today, OSIsoft's ProcessBook is capable of displaying much more sophisticated images than this example. Omicron has worked on dozens of projects to optimize the use of ProcessBook at its clients.

In the mid-1990’s, a Philadelphia area refinery approached Omicron with an issue: It took far too long for the refinery engineers to travel to the Control Room to view what was happening around the plant. The refiner wanted to enhance OSIsoft’s Plant Information (PI) historian to enable plant engineers to view real-time data from any location within the plant. Could Omicron help?

Omicron’s CTO, David Soll, took on the challenge and developed a graphic application using Microsoft Windows that could be viewed on any PC connected to the plant’s ethernet network. On the screen, pumps looked like pumps and tanks looked like tanks - and the current data values were right there and easy to read. The engineers were thrilled.

A manager from a sister refinery saw the application and immediately campaigned to have that application installed at his refinery. The word got out and OSISoft came to look at it. The rest is history: OSIsoft's PI ProcessBook was created by a project team that included Omicron consultants. Today's ProcessBook contains many enhancements that were not feasible 20 years ago, but it all started with the technical vision of Omicron's CTO.

Clients call on Omicron to innovate, reduce complexity, slash maintenance and improve reliability. Our experienced OSIsoft PI, .NET and SharePoint team has made many contributions to the world of PI applications through our technical vision and recognition of possibilities that others do not see. Often, Omicron is called upon to bridge the gap between PI and another package to provide stronger business benefits.

Small portion of a ProcessBook display for a plant. In the 1990's, Omicron was instrumental in conceiving how PI could be used to support engineers at any location in a plant. Today, OSIsoft's ProcessBook is capable of displaying much more sophisticated images than this example. Omicron has worked on dozens of projects to optimize the use of ProcessBook at its clients.

In the mid-1990’s, a Philadelphia area refinery approached Omicron with an issue: It took far too long for the refinery engineers to travel to the Control Room to view what was happening around the plant. The refiner wanted to enhance OSIsoft’s Plant Information (PI) historian to enable plant engineers to view real-time data from any location within the plant. Could Omicron help?

Omicron’s CTO, David Soll, took on the challenge and developed a graphic application using Microsoft Windows that could be viewed on any PC connected to the plant’s ethernet network. On the screen, pumps looked like pumps and tanks looked like tanks - and the current data values were right there and easy to read. The engineers were thrilled.

A manager from a sister refinery saw the application and immediately campaigned to have that application installed at his refinery. The word got out and OSISoft came to look at it. The rest is history: OSIsoft's PI ProcessBook was created by a project team that included Omicron consultants. Today's ProcessBook contains many enhancements that were not feasible 20 years ago, but it all started with the technical vision of Omicron's CTO.

Clients call on Omicron to innovate, reduce complexity, slash maintenance and improve reliability. Our experienced OSIsoft PI, .NET and SharePoint team has made many contributions to the world of PI applications through our technical vision and recognition of possibilities that others do not see. Often, Omicron is called upon to bridge the gap between PI and another package to provide stronger business benefits.