Finding the root cause of process upsets

A new whitepaper from ExperTune, "Finding the Root Cause of Process Upsets", can be downloaded at no-charge from their website.

The white paper explains new methods to identify and resolve the root cause of process upset conditions. Finding the root cause of upsets is critical to permanently solving process upsets. Solving the root cause issue saves time and increases efficiencies faster than other methods. For example, attempting to tune all affected control loops involved much effort compared to finding and fixing the one root cause of the upset.

It shows how to identify and track down the two different primary categories of process upsets. One approach involves large-scale correlation analysis using existing real-time data from a process data historian. New graphical techniques are used to show correlation as patterns of color, simplifying the analysis.

John Gerry, President and Founder of ExperTune, says "We are seeing people develop tremendous process knowledge in a very short time. When engineers graphically see the process interactions, they immediately zoom in to root causes. This approach has efficiently solved many long-standing problems at our customer's process plants."

The tools and techniques have been proven in dozens of plants, including refining, chemicals, pulp & paper, and other process industries. The white paper includes an example case study showing how hydrogen swings were eliminated saving over 50,000 MMBtu annually.