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User Guide

Determine downtime or operating time by creating a new tag

Determining downtime and uptime by creating a new tag is a useful practice for a variety of purposes, including maintenance planning, process optimization, and performance evaluation. Here are some examples of how this can be used in practice: 

  • Preventive maintenance: In chemical plants, tagging equipment downtime improves preventive maintenance planning.

  • Bottleneck detection: Measuring equipment uptime reveals process bottlenecks for improved efficiency.

  • Batch Optimization: Tagging batch start and end times can improve production schedules for higher throughput.

  • Downtime and uptime tags facilitate cost analysis, helping plants reduce costs associated with interruptions.

Create a Tag Builder Formula that is equal to 1 while the process has downtime or is in operation

Formula for analog/ discrete tags (downtime)

if(LEVEL<1, 1, 0)

Variable mapping:

A1_Determine_downtime_or_operating_time_by_creating_a_new_tag.png

  • LEVEL = level tag (no shift)

Formula for string tags (downtime):

if(PHASE="PHASE1", 1, 0)-b*0 

Variable mapping:

A2_Determine_downtime_or_operating_time_by_creating_a_new_tag.png

  • PHASE = level tag (no shift)

  • b = any high-frequency analog tag (shift: 1s)

  • Here we use the following trick: Stepped formula tag

Depending on your needs, TrendMiner offers 3 different options for reading out and analyzing downtime or uptime.
Capture the downtime or uptime in an aggregation tag

  • Create a new Tag Builder Aggregation with the following settings:

    • Operator: AVERAGE for relative value or INTEGRAL (per minute) for time in minutes

    • Direction: BACKWARD,

    • Aggregate per: 24 HOURS

  • Remember that the aggregation has a moving window and each value refers to the last 24 hours.

Capture downtime or uptime using the Statics or Compare Layers table

  • Set the focus chart to the period you are interested in and open the Statistics or Compare Layers table.

  • The Average (AVG) parameter shows the relative value and the Integral (/d) parameter shows the downtime or uptime in days.

Capture downtime or uptime with calculations on search results
A3_Determine_downtime_or_operating_time_by_creating_a_new_tag.png
A4_Determine_downtime_or_operating_time_by_creating_a_new_tag.png

  • Use the trick of reporting on daily, monthly or yearly periods with TrendMiners time tags (TM_day, TM_month, TM_year) to capture downtime or uptime.

  • Create a value based search and look for e.g. TM_month "constant".

  • The next step is to add calculations to the search results.

  • The Average (AVG) parameter shows the relative value and the Integral (/d) parameter shows the downtime or uptime in days.

  • The values are calculated for all periods at once and can easily be exported to Excel.

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