Many control system manufacturers and third party companies now offer tools that are designed to monitor process control and instrumentation performance. In addition to providing on-line information that summarizes control utilization, the user may access other information that may be helpful in determining the cause of, and solution to, poor control utilization. In section 3.4 of Advanced Control Foundation – Tools, Techniques, and Applications the performance monitoring capability embedded in the DeltaV control system is used to illustrate some of the features that may be found in commercial performance monitoring tool. For example, when the performance monitoring application is first opened an overview of the plant may be displayed as shown below.
From this overview, the user may select to see a performance summary for an individual process area, unit, or cell in the plant.
The workshop included in Chapter 3 is designed to illustrate features that are typically available in commercial performance monitoring products. The process areas and exercise for this workshop may be viewed by accessing the book’s web site. A YouTube video that shows the workshop solution may be viewed by selecting the Solution tab.
