Webinar Series for SA Customers

Electronic Signatures within DeltaV has been around for years now, but at least in my experience, it’s one of the most under utilized features of the system. So with that in mind, we have initiated a Webinar series for our Service Agreement customers the first topic being the use of Electronic Signatures and ESIG Policies.

Our goal is to provide helpful insight in our product and technology offerings and to help our Service Agreement customers get the most out of their systems.

I hosted the inaugural Webinar just this morning and we had excellent attendance from throughout the Carolinas.

Batch Events Whitepaper

I'm sorry I jumped the gun last time in directing you out to the Acme Biotech site to download my whitepaper on Batch Events in DeltaV version 10.3 - I've got it finished now, so head on over to Acme and follow the links to the document.

PMBR

With batch event and LOG EVENT information going into the DeltaV version 10.3 Event Chronicle, you can start putting together simple views or what I’ve affectionately termed as Poor Man’s Batch Reporting (PMBR).

Process History View just doesn’t have the horsepower for the types of queries required. And that’s OK, because the Event Chronicle is a SQL database. So what I’ve done is link the alarms and events table into Access. This was easy because the ODBC data source is already setup for you in DeltaV:

Then I created two queries – one to get unique Batch ID’s and one to get the batch events. The Find Unique BatchIDs query looks like this in SQL:


SELECT Right(Events1!Attribute,Len(Events1!Attribute)-InStr(1,Events1!Attribute," ")) AS BatchID
FROM Events1
GROUP BY Right(Events1!Attribute,Len(Events1!Attribute)-InStr(1,Events1!Attribute," ")), Events1.Attribute
HAVING (((First(Events1.Attribute)) Like "@*") AND ((Count(Events1.Attribute))>1));

Executing this gives:

The Batch Events query required a parameter (well it did for me, anyway, but I am no SQL guru – I’m sure someone out there can do a better job), its SQL looks like this:

PARAMETERS BatchID Text ( 255 );
SELECT Events1.Date_Time, Events1.State, Events1.Desc1, Events1.Desc2
FROM Events1
WHERE (((Events1.Attribute) Like "*" & [BatchID])) OR (((Events1.Desc1) Like "*" & [BatchID]))
ORDER BY Events1.Date_Time;

When I run the query, I get prompted for the BatchID:

And the results look like this:

The pressure drop data was captured with the LOG EVENT function in the FERM_PTEST phase.

So here's a way to generate some simple batch reports without dealing with those pesky EVT files. Head over to my website - I'll be consolidating the 3 posts about batch events/reports into a whitepaper.

Batch Events in PHV

Back in April, I wrote about how major batch events can now make their way into Process History View. So what’s that look like? How do I find these batch events? Well, there’s a new Category named BATCH-EVENT. So if I go into PHV, and filter on Category equal to BATCH-EVENT, I get something like this (I’ve hidden some columns that don’t pertain to batch events to make it easier to read):

One of the first things to note is the Parameter column contains both the unique Batch ID as assigned by DeltaV and the Batch ID as entered from the Create Batch view. The State column gives you a taste of the different “major batch events” now being captured. Here’s a non-comprehensive list of major batch events:

BATCH ADDED
BATCH REMOVED
CAMPAIGN CREATED
LOAD
Manual Phase Started
Mode Change
Operation Finished
Operation Started
Operation Started with Equipment
Phase Finished
Phase Started
Phase Started with Equipment
Procedure Finished
Procedure Started
REMOVED
Resource Acquired by recipe
Resource Released by recipe
State Changed
Unit Procedure Finished
Unit Procedure Started
Unit Procedure Started with Equipment

Noticeably absent from the list are report parameters. If I could somehow get report-like parameters into PHV, I’d have some pretty useful information. Enter the LOG EVENT function. The LOG EVENT function has been around a long time (go to BOL on how to use it), but the cool thing is how it looks in PHV. And it looks different, depending if it’s used in a regular module as opposed to phase logic:

When it’s used in just a regular module, the Desc1 column is empty. When it’s used in phase logic, the Desc1 column contains the Batch ID!

So for this example, if I look at the Parameter column to contain Acme11May2009 or the Desc1 column to contain Acme11May2009, and sort the result by Date/Time…to be continued.

Transitional Analysis and PAT

I was with a customer last week and I was going over my Transitional Analysis application. As I described it in more detail – its ability to non-obtrusively measure chromatography column viability prior to applying product – the customer got more and more animated. Finally, he looked at me and said “Why, that’s PAT!”

So check out www.transitionalanalysis.net for more information about the application. And by the way, the customer I was talking to doesn’t have a DeltaV system. He does have a bunch of chromatography skids with proprietary (vendor supplied) method controls. The TA application is platform agnostic.

Become a Fan

I've added this followers widget over on the right hand side of my blog page for Fans of Process Control Musings.

If you’re a regular reader (or even if you’re just a lurker) become a follower. Now, you won’t be getting any discount coupons for MX controllers, but you’ll be letting everyone know you’re part of something bigger.