Jim Montague is the Executive Editor at Control and Control Design magazines. Jim has spent the last 13 years as an editor and brings a wealth of automation and controls knowledge to the position. For the past eight years, Jim worked at Reed Business Information as News Editor for Control Engineering magazine. Jim has a BA in English from Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, and lives in Skokie, Illinois.
Most of today's users are overwhelmed by paperwork, voluminous reports and all kinds of data overload, as well as disparate systems and equipment that aren't able to connect and communicate with each other. Luckily, just when it seems like there's no help in sight, one brave historian technology is stepping up to lend a hand. In fact, several Uniformance solutions from Honeywell Process Solutions (HPS) have been updated and enhanced, overrunning their former job descriptions and helping users coordinate all their data in real-time or close to it, to make faster and more profitable decisions.
"The main question is how to speed up data analysis, to get revenue in and losses out," says Jan Pingel, HPS product director for Uniformance. "The current state is that most users have multiple, isolated data sources, islands of automation, and isolated and duplicated analysis tools."
Pingel presented "Expanding Uniformance—Driving Digital Intelligence Through Unified Data, Analytics and Visualization" on the opening day of Honeywell User Group (HUG) Americas 2015, June 22 in San Antonio, Texas.
"Uniformance now delivers real-time digital intelligence through unified data, analytics and visualization. This enables it to be the backbone for the Internet of Things (IoT) and puts data in Big Data." Jan Pingel, HPS product director for Uniformance on the opening day of Honeywell User Group (HUG) Americas 2015, June 22 in San Antonio, Texas.
"What users need and want is real-time data intelligence, visualization of that information anytime and anyplace, and the ability to get the right data and aggregated KPIs at the right time to the right people. They want the ability to predict and detect issues proactively; standardized and consistent metrics across their organization; to organize and navigate within an asset context; troubleshoot and isolate issues quickly for faster decision-making; capture knowledge and deploy best practices; and continuous improvement."
Consequently, Pingel reported, HPS has developed and is launching "the new face of Uniformance," which affects all of its four main solutions, including:
- Uniformance KPI that defines, tracks, analyzes and improves KPIs for effective performance management;
- Uniformance Asset Sentinel that monitors plant performance and equipment health with powerful analytics;
- Uniformance PHD that captures and stores real-time process and event data across the enterprise;
- Uniformance Insight that visualizes process conditions and investigates events from any web browser.
"Uniformance now delivers real-time digital intelligence through unified data, analytics and visualization," explained Pingel. "This enables it to be the backbone for the Internet of Things (IoT) and puts data in Big Data."
Pingel added that overall improvements to Uniformance include adding advanced asset-based calculation capability and KPI visualization. This means that:
- Uniformance KPI's new features include the ability to connect to any Honeywell or third-party applications; visualize and analyze KPIs to get insights; track thousands of KPIs to grow with users' businesses and retain histories for years; obtain alerts when a KPI violates a limit; and access KPIs and related information on mobile devices.
- Uniformance Asset Sentinel's new features include an advanced calculation engine for scheduled and on-data changes, template calculations, embedded performance models, and UniSim and Thermo software. It also has event detection for rules engine and notification functions, as well as visualization and reporting via asset dashboards, trends, reports graphics and displays.
- Uniformance PHD's new features include an enterprise historian; scalability to millions of tags for years of history; a consolidated event journal to correlate events with process history; premier integration with Experion; and tag sync function for Experion and OPC.
- Uniformance Insight's new features include graphics and flexible ad-hoc trends; availability from a PC or in the field from a tablet PC; support for Uniformance PHD and third-party historians and data sources; a thin-client application that requires no installation on user devices; and easy workspace layout management.
“In summary, the new enhanced Uniformance suite is adding new and powerful visualization; strong asset modeling and templates; and new advanced analyses, including asset-based analysis with powerful new libraries, KPI analysis and visualization, and event detection and notification," added Pingel. "It's fully integrated to provide superior interaction and collaboration.”
