Dynamic search engine for an industrial environment

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-9760635-B2
Application number	US-201414536490-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Nov 7, 2014
Priority date	Nov 7, 2014
Publication date	Sep 12, 2017
Grant date	Sep 12, 2017

Abstract

A multi-platform industrial search system facilitates indexing and searching of plant-wide data residing on multiple different data platforms. The industrial search system automatically inventories industrial devices and other data sources located throughout a plant, and identifies available data items on each data source. The search system indexes the discovered data items in a federated data model that can subsequently be searched to locate data items or tags of interest. The federated data model records references to data items found on different types of data sources, including but not limited to industrial controller programs, human-machine interface applications, data historians, device documentation stores, inventory tracking systems, and other such data sources. The search system can also initiate automated searches of the federated data model in response to detected performance issues and deliver notifications and contextual information to plant personnel.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A system for searching industrial data, comprising:
a memory that stores executable components;
a processor, operatively coupled to the memory, that executes the components, the components comprising:
an indexing component configured to discover available data items distributed across multiple data sources of an industrial environment and to generate a federated data model that records respective locations of the data items, wherein the data items comprise at least first data tags of one or more control programs stored on one or more industrial controllers and visualization references of second data tags displayed on one or more human-machine interface devices;
a search component configured to perform a search of the federated data model for a specified data item and to generate a set of search results identifying locations of the data item, wherein the set of search results comprises at least a first subset of results representing a subset of the first data tags corresponding to the data item and stored on at least one of the one or more industrial controllers and a second subset of results representing one or more of the visualization references of a subset of the second data tags corresponding to the data item; and
a device interface component configured to segregate the set of search results into the first subset of results and the second subset of results to yield a segregated set of search results and send the segregated set of search results to a client device.

2. The system of claim 1 , wherein the one or more control programs comprise at least one of one or more ladder logic programs, one or more sequential function chart programs, one or more function block diagrams, or one or more structured text programs.

3. The system of claim 1 , wherein the multiple data sources further comprise at least one of a data historian device, a work order management system, an inventory tracking system, or a documentation data store.

4. The system of claim 1 , wherein the device interface component is further configured to:
in response to receipt of first selection data from the client device indicating a selection of a first search result of the first subset of results, select a controller logic development application from among a set of available applications, initiate a launching of the controller logic development application on at least one of the client device or another client device, and instruct the controller logic development application to display the first search result on the client device or the other client device, and
in response to receipt of second selection data from the client device indicating a selection of a second search result of the second subset of results, select a human-machine interface viewing application from among the set of available applications, initiate a launching of the human-machine interface viewing application on at least one of the client device or the other client device, and instruct the human-machine interface viewing application to display the second search result on the client device or the other client device.

5. The system of claim 4 , wherein the device interface component is further configured to establish a communicative link between the client device and a data source corresponding to the first search result or the second search result, and deliver near real-time values of a data item corresponding to the first search result or the second search result retrieved from the data source to the client device.

6. The system of claim 1 , further comprising:
a monitoring component configured to, in response a determination that one or more near real-time values of the available data items satisfy a criterion defined in a monitoring rule indicative of a performance issue relating to an industrial asset, initiate an automated search of the federated data model based on a search criterion defined in the monitoring rule; and
a notification component configured to, in response to the determination that the one or more near real-time values satisfy the criterion, send notification information to one or more client devices, wherein the notification information comprises information about the performance issue and a set of results of the automated search.

7. The system of claim 1 , wherein the indexing component, the search component, and the device interface component are implemented on at least one of a stand-alone computing device, a web server device, or one or more cloud platform devices.

8. The system of claim 1 , wherein the device interface component is further configured to receive search query data specifying the data item, wherein the search query data comprises at least one of manually entered text data, translated barcode data, translated quick response (QR) code data, or information retrieved from an industrial device via near field communication.

9. The system of claim 1 , wherein at least one result of the second subset of results identifies a human-machine interface application and an interface screen of the human-machine interface application on which the data item is displayed.

10. A method for indexing and searching multi-platform industrial data, comprising:
identifying, by a system comprising a processor, available data items located on multiple data sources of an industrial environment, wherein the available data items comprise at least first data tags referenced by one or more control programs stored on one or more industrial controllers and visualization references of second data tags displayed on one or more human-machine interface devices;
generating, by the system, a federated data model that indexes respective locations of the data items;
receiving, by the system, query information specifying a data item;
in response to the receiving, identifying, by the system, locations of the data item based on a search of the federated data model;
generating, by the system, a set of search results identifying the locations of the data item, wherein the set of search results are segregated into at least a first subset of results representing a subset of the first data tags matching the data item stored on at least one of the one or more industrial controllers and a second subset of results representing one or more of the visualization references of the second data tags matching the data item; and
sending, by the system, the set of search results to a client device.

11. The method of claim 10 , wherein the search is a first search and the set of search results is a first set of search results, and the method further comprises:
identifying one or more related data items that are related to the data item based on the first set of search results; and
determining a second set of search results based on at least a second search of the federated data model, wherein the second search uses the data item and the one or more related data items as search criteria,
wherein the sending comprises sending the second set of search results to the client device.

12. The method of claim 10 , further comprising
in response to the receiving the query information,
performing a web search using one or more results of the set of search results as search criteria,
receiving at least one web search result based on the web search;
correlating the at least one web search result to the one or more results, and
displaying at least one link to the at least one web search result in association with the one or more results.

13. The method of claim 10 , further comprising, in response to receiving selection data from the client device indicating a selection of a search result of the first subset of res

Assignees

• Rockwell Automation Tech Inc

Inventors

• Bliss Ronald E
• Reichard Douglas J
• Sandler Scott N
• Pantaleano Michael J
• Cahalane Ryan
• Walter Jonathan D
• Korpela Jessica L

Classifications

• G05B2219/32234

  Maintenance planning · CPC title

• G05B2219/23258

  GUI graphical user interface, icon, function bloc editor, labview · CPC title

• G06F16/951 Primary

  Indexing; Web crawling techniques · CPC title

• G06F3/06

  Digital input from, or digital output to, record carriers {, e.g. RAID, emulated record carriers or networked record carriers} · CPC title

• H04L67/10 Primary

  in which an application is distributed across nodes in the network (software deployment G06F8/60; multiprogramming arrangements G06F9/46) · CPC title