Data pipeline for process control system analytics

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10168691-B2
Application number	US-201514873721-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Oct 2, 2015
Priority date	Oct 6, 2014
Publication date	Jan 1, 2019
Grant date	Jan 1, 2019

Abstract

A data pipeline is used as a fundamental processing element for implementing techniques that automatically or autonomously perform signal processing-based learning in a process plant or monitoring system. Each data pipeline includes a set of communicatively interconnected data processing blocks that perform processing on one or more sources of data in a predetermined order to, for example, clean the data, filter the data, select data for further processing, perform supervised or unsupervised learning on the data, etc. The individual processing blocks or modules within a data pipeline may be stored and executed at different devices in a plant network to perform distributed data processing. Moreover, each data pipeline can be integrated into one or more higher level analytic modules that perform higher level analytics, such as quality prediction, fault detection, etc. on the processed data. The use of data pipelines within a plant network enables data collected within a plant control or monitoring system to be processed automatically and used in various higher level analytic modules within the plant during ongoing operation of the plant.

First claim

The invention claimed is:

1. A plant communication system for use within a process plant environment that implements a process, comprising:
a process control network including a multiplicity of process control devices disposed within the process plant to control the process and a process control communication network communicatively coupled to the multiplicity of process control devices, wherein one or more of the multiplicity of process control devices collects or generates process control data;
a further plant communication network including a plurality of processing devices communicatively coupled together by a further plant communication network link, wherein at least one of the plurality of processing devices on the further plant communication network is communicatively connected to the process control communication network; and
a distributed data pipeline that is defined, in a configuration environment, to perform, on process control data, a particular processing operation by using a series of data processing modules communicatively connected together in a particular communicative order across a plurality of different devices of the process plant environment, and different portions of the distributed data pipeline are downloaded from the configuration environment into the plurality of different devices of the process plant environment for runtime execution of the particular processing operation, the distributed data pipeline including one or more upstream data processing modules coupled to a set of downstream data processing modules, wherein:
each data processing module included in the set of downstream data processing modules within the distributed data pipeline processes data received from a respective one or more upstream data processing module within the distributed data pipeline,
at least one of the one or more upstream data processing modules of the distributed data pipeline is disposed in one of the multiplicity of process control devices connected to the process control communication network, and
at least one of the downstream data processing modules of the distributed data pipeline is disposed in one of the plurality of processing devices on the further plant communication network.

2. The plant communication system of claim 1 , further including a database communicatively coupled to one of the downstream data processing modules of the distributed data pipeline for storing the data generated by the one of the downstream data processing modules of the distributed data pipeline and making the stored data available to other applications via the further plant communication network, the other applications including at least one analytics module or application.

3. The plant communication system of claim 1 , wherein one of the upstream data processing modules is disposed in the process control network and collects raw process control data for processing by the distributed data pipeline, and further including a database communicatively coupled to the process control communication network for independently storing the collected raw process control data.

4. The plant communication system of claim 3 , wherein the database is disposed in one of the processing devices coupled to the further plant communication network.

5. The plant communication system of claim 1 , wherein the further plant communication network is a big data communication network.

6. The plant communication system of claim 1 , wherein the further plant communication network comprises a plurality of different communication networks coupled together.

7. The plant communication system of claim 6 , wherein the plurality of different communication networks includes a first plant based communication network and a second cloud based communication network.

8. The plant communication system of claim 6 , wherein the distributed data pipeline includes at least one different data processing module stored in a respective processing device within each of the plurality of different communication networks.

9. The plant communication system of claim 6 , wherein at least one of the plurality of different communication networks is a wireless communication network.

10. The plant communication system of claim 1 , wherein the process control communication network comprises a plurality of different control communication networks communicatively coupled together.

11. The plant communication system of claim 1 , wherein one of the data processing modules is a data collection module that obtains data from a data source within the process control network.

12. The plant communication system of claim 11 , wherein one of the data processing modules is a data cleaning module that cleans data obtained from the data source within the process control network.

13. The plant communication system of claim 11 , wherein one of the data processing modules is a data alignment module that time aligns data from multiple data sources within the process control network.

14. The plant communication system of claim 11 , wherein one of the data processing modules is a sensitivity data analysis module that determines the sensitivity of data to a particular event within the plant.

15. The plant communication system of claim 11 , wherein one of the data processing modules is a causality analysis module that determines a causal relationship between data from a data source and an event within the plant.

16. The plant communication system of claim 11 , wherein one of the data processing modules is a learning module that performs supervised learning on the data.

17. The plant communication system of claim 11 , wherein one of the data processing modules is a learning module that performs unsupervised learning on the data.

18. The plant communication system of claim 11 , wherein one of the data processing modules is a data presentation module that presents data generated within the distributed data pipeline to a user.

19. The plant communication system of claim 1 , wherein the distributed data pipeline includes one or more data collection modules that collect process data from the process control network, one or more intermediate data processing modules that process the data collected by one or more of the data collection modules or another intermediate data processing module, and one or more end-use data processing modules that store output data generated by the one or more intermediate data processing modules or the one or more end-use data processing modules in a manner that can be accessed by one or more other applications.

20. The plant communication system of claim 19 , wherein one or more of the data processing modules of the distributed data pipeline is intermittently connected within the distributed data pipeline.

21. The plant communication system of claim 20 , wherein one of the one or more intermittently connected data processing modules is a data display module that displays data produced within the distributed data pipeline to a user.

22. The plant communication system of claim 20 , wherein one of the one or more intermittently connected data processing modules is disposed in a handheld device that is intermittently connected to the further plant communication network.

23. The plant communication system of claim 19 , wherein the output data is simultaneously accessible by two or more other applications.

24. The plant communications system of claim 1 , wherein one of the multiplicity of process control devices is a process

Assignees

• Fisher Rosemount Systems Inc

Inventors

• Zornio Peter
• Nixon Mark J
• Wojsznis Wilhelm K
• Lucas Michael J
• Muston Paul R
• Rotvold Eric D
• Blevins Terrence L
• Law Gary K

Classifications

• G05B2219/31211

  Communicate diagnostic data from intelligent field device controller to central · CPC title

• G05B2219/33333

  Network multiprocessing · CPC title

• G05B19/0421 Primary

  Multiprocessor system · CPC title

• H04L43/045

  for graphical visualisation of monitoring data · CPC title

• G05B2219/31124

  Interface between communication network and process control, store, exchange data · CPC title