Plant-Wide Monitoring with Clarity and Context

Process-intensive Industrial Operators are increasingly wading into the Digital Transformation revolution to streamline production in the face of globalization, a shifting workforce, and heightened cyber security threats. Delivering safe, reliable, and environmentally friendly operations while maintaining a competitive advantage over peers is virtually unachievable without intelligent adoption of technology and cultural acceptance of changes to long standing processes.
 

As long-time machinery experts retire, companies must adapt to the realities of integrating a new generation of technically savvy workers that lack extensive operational experience. Simply put, it is difficult to replace human expertise; however, technology can be leveraged to scale pockets of knowledge throughout global organizations, by collecting and transmitting contextual data from the edge to centrally managed locations for analytical development and remote support.
 

Bently Nevada has been partnering with customers to help solve these challenges by focusing on 3 key strategic pillars: Connectivity, Analytics, and Visualization. We are here to provide access to clear and contextualized data to support improving your businesses objectives.

System 1 connects to data sources on the Edge and collects high resolution vibration, process, and control system data. This data can be collected from a Bently Nevada Device, such as 3500 or Ranger Pro, from a Programmable Logic Controller (PLC), or from another Historian. All data can be stored at up to once-per-second. In addition, an alarm on any tag mapped to a machine will trigger high-resolution data capture from all other tags, which includes 100ms static data from 3500.

Bently Nevada realizes many customers are using internal or external solutions (such as AI) to mine their data lakes and gain new insights. To support such initiatives, Bently Nevada has expanded System 1’s export capabilities allowing Data Scientists to have access to System 1’s simple and complex data sets. The OPC protocol is the primary interface, with DA export currently supported and UA export for Waveforms targeted for release in v19.2.

Within System 1, threshold alarms can be configured per machine operating state, with adjustable settings for time delay, latching, and suppression. While the S1 alarming engine is powerful, it can be augmented by supporting modules.

Decision Support allows users to easily create rules to gain new insights into the behavior of their machines and/or process conditions. For over a decade, customers have been using Decision Support to expedite processing of vibration analysis, process conditions, and machine performance conditions. Decision Support consumes live data from System 1, performs mathematical and logical operations on the data, and returns derived values to System 1 for alarming, visualization, and notification. The next generation Decision Support package, with enhanced features, will be available in August 2020.

Bently Performance further extends the analytic capabilities of the System 1 Platform with online thermodynamic performance monitoring. It is fully integrated with System 1 and provides access to comprehensive mechanical and thermodynamic machine-condition information. 

Post collection and analysis, System 1 provides best-in-class visualization tools. The HMI Builder allows customers to graphically represent their entire Plant System using the built-in symbol library. Measurement status can be associated with components within the HMI view and navigational links can be added to any Machine or Device View within the Enterprise.

The Events List enables customers to view all alarms throughout the enterprise and quickly navigate to supporting data. Notifications can also be tied to Events for managing assets by exception.

With all of that said, the true star of the application is the Plotting workspace, where collected data can be viewed and manipulated to diagnose machinery health issues. With a multitude of plot types and tools, users can quickly hone in on abnormalities to support smooth operation of their machinery.

Expectations of usability have grown substantially over the last decade and as a result, users of consumer and industrial technology now demand products that seamlessly support their life and work. Through user research in 20 countries with more than 400 end users, we have studied our customers’ team dynamics, site processes, and technology suites to determine how System 1 can best support Plant-Wide asset monitoring. As a result, we have designed System 1 around 11 key customer use cases, rather than to individual features and functionality. Every new feature is integrated in a manner that enhances these use cases, while maintaining consistency in interactions and visual patterns.

Notable features that have been driven into System 1 based on user research around our key use cases include:

• Replication – A key capability that enables OT/IT System Integration, Replication can transfer all System 1 data from the Edge to seamlessly integrate with Digital Transformation platforms. This includes 1-second trend data, startup/shutdown captures, and high-resolution alarm captures.
   
• HMI Builder – After engagements with major Oil & Gas Customers, the desire for an integrated HMI Builder within System 1 was identified. This capability, combined with external interfaces to import process and control system data, allows customers to graphically depict the health of their entire system. Layering on fundamental System 1 capabilities (e.g., high speed data storage, strong trending capabilities, performance curve overlays) rounds out the Diagnostic HMI use case.
   
• OPC UA – In pursuit of Digital Transformation, many customers have requested the ability to extract dynamic waveform data from the System 1 Historian for machine learning. The first phase of OPC UA capability will support this need with Waveform Export slated for v19.2. OPC UA will be extended in future releases to include A&E Export, Static Data Export, and Data Import.

By combining its Connectivity, Analytics, and Visualization capabilities, System 1 is positioned to be the premier Edge Historian and Condition Monitoring platform of all Industrial Operators. 
To recap:

System 1 collects data from any asset within a facility. Collection rates of up to 1/second are achievable during steady-state operations, while sub-second data can be stored during alarm and startup/shutdown events (when available from the device). 

The stored data can be analyzed to derive insights using a rich set of tools. The core System 1 application can configure threshold-based alarms, while Decision Support and Bently Performance layer on additional analytic capabilities for earlier detection of operational issues.

Replication frees data from the secure confines of the plant network, allowing users easy access to the System 1 Platform. Up to 8 Transmitter databases can be replicated to 1 Receiver database on the Business Network. 

System 1 v19.2 will be released on 8-November-2019. The new version will include heavily requested features within all three platform pillars. Upon release, an overview of all new features will be provided as part of the Welcome to System 1 v19.2 newsletter, accessible within the Bently Nevada FlexNet download portal. In addition, feature videos will be posted on BN Tech Support for all customers with an active M&S agreement.

Once on the Business Network, users can access System 1’s extensive visualization capabilities, 
allowing for efficient investigation of abnormal machine conditions.

The deep capabilities of the System 1 Platform will be explored in upcoming releases of Orbit magazine. Planned articles include:

• Q4 2019    System 1 - Diagnostic HMI
• Q1 2020    The Evolution of System 1 – From Classic to Evo
• Q2 2020    From the Edge to Lake - OT/IT System Integration with System 1
• Q3 2020    (Re)Introducing System 1 Decision Support
• Q4 2020    System 1 - Turbomachinery Monitoring 

With many more to come…

Finally, interfaces (i.e., OPC UA) serve up the rich System 1 data to external systems, populating data lakes and feeding machine learning algorithms.