Importance of Quality Historical Data for Improved Plant Operation and Advanced Process Control Implementation

With over 20 years of providing historians for many and varied applications, Vista Control Systems has learned much about the uses of and, at times, extremely valuable, data. From leading to a deeper understanding of the process to finding the cause of very expensive plant upsets, good and complete historical data can be priceless. Process data can be used effectively for system identification followed by PID tuning optimization and implementation of powerful advanced process control schemes inside a DCS, PLC or a SCADA system. PiControl has developed some powerful tools in this area. This paper describes some tools we supply and outline some customer experiences to support these statements.