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Building an Abnormal Event Detection Model (April 2021)
Abnormal events like mechanical faults and unexpected disturbances cause process variation leading to degraded quality and even lost production time due to the actions of safety systems resulting in trips.In this webinar we demonstrate Geometric Process Control, a low-cost process visualization technology for building models that can be used to understand historic events as well as providing a real-time model that can capture deviations in real-time, alerting operations to impending degraded process operation.
Improving Energy Efficiency in Process Plants (March 2021)
This webinar presents examples of using our novel process analysis and control technology to show how process can be made easier to operate without increasing energy usage while still replicating low energy usage conditions found in the past. Once it is known how the plant should be operated it becomes easy to compare that with how it operates now and calculate the cost advantage to making operating changes. We’ll share success stories, where users have been able to make dramatic improvements by visualizing their own historic process data.
Modern Operator Alarm Improvement and Rationalization (February 2021)
The single biggest cause of poor operator alarm performance is inconsistent values of the alarm limits. But existing advice for finding alarm limits is only “put the alarm limits at the boundary of where you normally operate” without practical advice for finding that boundary across hundreds of variables. This is where GPC and the parallel plot can make a revolutionary change in approach.
In this webinar from February 2021 you will see the modern method of rationalization by locating the Operating Window and Envelope of any chosen set of objectives and setting alarm limits around its boundary, as well as the usefulness of being able to see and compare Windows and Envelopes for different operating objectives and the benefits of predicting Alarm Performance with immediate feedback instead of waiting weeks until after the new alarms have been implemented.
Using GPC to Reduce Variability, Increase Efficiency and Make More Money (January 2021)
Geometric Process Control (GPC), the only technology for viewing and exploiting fully multi-dimensional operating envelopes, brings proven benefits in productivity and safety to the many sites using it. This free webinar provides an overview of the technology with real-world application examples.
GPC lets engineers make fuller use of historic data than they have ever considered, enabling more questions to be asked and answered. By reducing process variability and targeting best operation, this provides measurable benefits in reducing costs, improving uptime, increasing quality, and providing a safer process. Operating envelopes connect business strategy, operations management and process operations, contributing to OpEx implementation.
In this webinar from January 2021 we present cases where our users have reduced energy costs, improved process reliability, and streamlined alarm improvement. Showcasing GPC in a fully visual way that makes the correlations and dependences clear without detailed mathematical background.
Driving Operational Excellence: the Science Linking Operating Envelopes and KPIs (December 2020)
A key part of Operational Excellence (OpEx) is implementing a business culture that uses appropriate leading and lagging Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to drive business objectives. Leading KPIs are used to inform real-time operations, and poor KPIs that are contradictory or don’t contribute to lagging KPI achievement are common, and impair, rather than enabling, the execution of business strategy.
Operating Envelopes, the full multi-dimensional relationship between process variables links the process, leading, and lagging KPIs. By using this envelope based on historic operation, potential KPIs can be identified and evaluated for consistency, both with one another, but also in driving lagging KPIs and business targets. Geometric Process Control (GPC), pioneered by PPCL, makes this possible and should be part of any process-based Operational Excellence program.
In this webinar delivered in December 2020, we will show you how the full feed-to-product process operating envelope can be visualized along with current and potential KPI targets. This allows the suitability and consistency of leading and lagging KPIs to be evaluated and improved, providing the link missing today.
Discover how Operating Envelopes take batch processes to new levels of performance (November 2020)
Have you got a Multi-Mode, Multi-Phase or Grade Transition process?
Many continuous processes have just one Normal Operating Mode (other than StartUp and Shutdown) and thus just one Normal Operating Envelope. But some processes have more than one normal Operating Mode or Phase and thus have to have more than one Normal Operating Envelope and have to be able to switch Operations between them.
In this webinar I will show you how easy it is with GPC (Geometric Process Control) to separate the individual multi-variable operating envelopes for each Mode, Phase or Transition and then have GPC automatically build linked real-time Operating Envelope models for each one for much better operator alarms, open-loop operator guidance, fault prediction and closed-loop control. No maths or equations or advanced maths qualifications needed and designed for use by the front-line process, control and automation engineers who have the best knowledge of their process and its actual operating limitations and practices. It's no more difficult than creating a single-Envelope model for a continuous process, as you have seen demonstrated in many of our other webinars. It just takes a little longer.
How does GPC compare to other methods of modelling multi-envelope processes? We think the odds are heavily stacked in favour of GPC but that’s our opinion and is something that is really for you to decide. So view this webinar from November 2020 and decide!
Operational Process Improvement: You Already have the Data (September 2020)
You already have the data for enormous potential in improving plant operation through making operational changes to capture, repeat, and improve best historic operation. Understanding your process behavior is key to unlocking benefits such as higher throughput, better product, lowest costs, less waste, and more uptime.
This webinar, as presented by Dr Alan Mahoney, will show you visual tools that engineering and operations can use to extract and exploit the wealth of information available. Thus demonstrating a straightforward visual method of quickly finding consistent limits for operating windows that capture desired performance for many variables at once.
Capturing and Replicating Optimal Process Operation (December 2019)
The key to repeating best operation is understanding your process behavior. This is necessary to achieve higher throughput, lower costs, least waste and minimum downtime. While some of this is known in the process design, much of what is taken as true about your process is likely wrong or contradictory. The resolution to these conflicts and a true process picture are already present implicitly in your plant historian, built from years of experience. This webinar, given by Dr Alan Mahoney in December 2019, will demonstrate PPCL's unique visual tools which engineers can use to extract and exploit the wealth of information available.
Geometric Process Control – what is it and why do I need it in my plant? (September 2019)
Geometric Process Control (GPC) is a technology developed here at PPCL. It lets you see hundreds of process variables and tens of thousands of observations from process and other plant data in a single parallel coordinates graph with supplemental time-trends, distribution plots, and Pareto plots with every individual point traceable through all the views. It comes with an extremely powerful graphical Boolean query capability that lets you extract feed-to-product operating windows and operating envelopes to help you explain why yesterday was such a great day for your KPIs and what went wrong last week when the fractionator column flooded five times.
Why is this important? Well, it lets you benefit from a few hundred thousand years of evolution and use your amazing human powers of pattern recognition and interpretation to determine cause-and-effect relationships – as well as correlations - in multi-variable problems where previously you had fewer than 10 variables to work with. You also would have needed some heavy-duty mathematics, which requires first an expensive statistician and then a hypothesis to test and which tends to introduce new complications when trying to explain your results to others.
Having determined your best operating envelope from process history, GPC creates a real-time model complete with graphical operator interface for process operator guidance and an OPC Client to link to your DCS or historian to keep your process operating in the best operating envelope you have chosen far into the future.
Watch this webinar from September 2019 to discover how GPC unifies process control, quality control, KPI achievement, operating limits and operator alarms into one readily understandable framework. A huge step forward for chemical engineering and you won’t need more than basic maths!
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PPCL Webinar: Building an Abnormal Event Detection Model
14th and 15th April
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