Process Performance Monitoring
What are we trying to achieve?
As the water companies seek to continually drive more and more cost out of
their businesses in order to meet OFWAT efficiency targets, so they must look
to the performance of their existing assets as the main area to reduce
operating cost as well as reducing operating risk. Process Performance
Monitoring enables companies to derive key underlying process indicators. These
indicators inform whether the processes are performing within target limits
and can also be used to benchmark performance to help identify those processes
that would benefit from process optimisation. Examples of processes suitable
for process monitoring include:
Biological treatment processes
Sludge thickening and dewatering plant
Sludge digestion
Chemical dosing
What are the benefits?
The benefits of this approach are two-fold.
Reduced operating costs.
By measuring, monitoring and benchmarking the performance of processes, water
companies gain access to wealth of information, currently not readily available
to many of the companies, that helps in highlighting areas for optimisation.
Once optimised, this information helps ensure that processes remain optimised
and do not slip back into old methods of "comfortable" operation. By automating
the data processing task, users can focus on implementation of optimisation
opportunities rather than on data collection and number crunching.
Reduced operating risk.
By monitoring process performance on a regular basis,
,companies can react to process changes and variations earlier so reducing the
risk that process variations go unnoticed and only picked up once compliance is
breached.
How do we do this?
IPMS enables companies to define their own process indicators and provides the
means to set up the required calculations easily and simply. IPMS includes a
range of algorithms that enable it to use any numeric data regardless of
timebase so allowing you to combine SCADA and analytical information without
having to concern yourself with the data handling issues. Combined with the
ability to define targets, costs, conversions and many other settings all this
makes IPMS a cost effective and powerful tool to assist companies in maximising
the value from their existing assets.
added on 23 Feb 2005
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