The PI System – A Vital Technology

© 2008 OSIsoft, Inc. | Company Confidential

The PI System – A Vital Technology

Todd McQuiston Senior PI Integration Specialist

Dow Corning Corporation

2© 2008 OSIsoft, Inc. | Company Confidential

Agenda

Introduction to Dow Corning Corp.– DCC’s History with PI– PI System Rundown / Details

Where the new (and sometimes old) PI user invariably finds oneself

Tools we ALL have– ProcessBook– Datalink– PI-ACE

How we made PI work better for us– PI Health Monitor


Agenda (Continued)

How we made PI work better for us (continued)– PI-TEEP– Quality Notifications– Rlink– Training, TRAINING, TRAINING

Key Technologies / Services that help us– Managed PI (mPI)– Enterprise Agreement (EA)

Future of PI at DCC– Sigmafine– AF / EF– Collectives / VM’s


Dow Corning Corporation in a Nutshell

One of world’s leaders in silicon-based chemistry– Silicone fluids, rubber, sealants– Semiconductor and Solar-grade silicon metal

$US 5 billion in sales in 2007Using SAP R/3 for our global ERP system since 1998.Approximately 11,000 employees globallyMore than 45,000 products split across two brands –

Dow Corning and Xiameter.


Dow Corning in the World


PI at Dow Corning Corporation

First installed in 1992 – VMS-based PI 1.xCompleted transition to NT (PI 3.2) in 2000.12 production PI servers around the world

– 4 in Asia, 3 in Europe, 5 in the United States– 1 network monitoring server on each continent

Approximately 500,000 tags globallyOver 1,500 users

– At any given time, key U.S. PI servers are handling 400+ simultaneous clients


PI at Dow Corning Corporation

Data sources to PI:– Fischer & Porter / Bailey– Allen Bradley PLC– Siemens PLC– Intellution SCADA– Foxboro I/A– Fisher/Rosemont– Batch Execution Systems (Batch Engines)– Radio Frequency and Bar-coding for Manual Data Entry– PC Based Manual Data Entry– Rockwell


Where you may find yourself today:

“I’ve bought PI, now what?”

“I have had PI for five years, now what?”

“Someone needs me to make PI do (insert request here), now what?!?”

“Please kill me.”


Tools we all have right now:


So…use PI more, or better

Monitoring– PI Health Monitor– Topview from Exele Information Systems– PIANO from OSIsoft (future)

PI-TEEP– Batch processes – are batches running too long, or down for

too long?– Continuous processes – are they running? If so, are they

running hard enough?– Latest version uses xMii (SAP Portal) as a front end –

universally available


Making PI Work for You

Quality Notifications – using simple ACE 2.1 code

Each note like this can save approximately $500 in testing. 11 Mixers, four batches per day per mixer.


Stretching the Limits of the PI System

Rlink – PP/PI– Automated production recording– Calculations run every four hours, posting results to SAP

within 20 minutes.

– Before Rlink was implemented, operators spent 2-4 hours per week manually entering productions and consumption, with an average error rate of 5.8%.

– After Rlink, manufacturing engineers spend approximately 2 hours per month validating data, using PI Processbook. Error rate is effectively 0%.

End result: more granular, and more ACCURATE inventory data.


And the Best Way to Improve Your System

TRAIN THOSE OPERATORS/ENGINEERS (you can skip the engineers)– Seriously, users will surprise you with a) the stuff they figure

out, or b) the stuff they ask YOU to accomplish.

Seriously, skip the engineers:


To What Do We Owe Our Good Fortune?

Enterprise Agreement (EA)– Effectively eliminates the time spent “counting licenses”– Permits us to expand our PI server grid, turning small

satellite sites into full PI sites for the simple cost of harware.• Ideal for small sites who expand beyond their WAN

bandwidth to Midland.– No more tag limits. (!)

• This seems small, but licensing/cost based on tag limits was a very large headache.

• The upside: we build pretty much every tag out there on the control system(s).

• The downside: we build pretty much every tag out there on the control system(s).


Big Brother is Always Watching, Comrades

Managed PI (mPI)– Round-the-clock monitoring by the OSIsoft NOC (Network

Operations Center)– The alert notes sent to Dow Corning can be specially

formatted to auto-generate tickets in our problem management system (Service Center)

– Single point of contact – one person who can hear all your hopes, dreams, and sleep deprivation-induced nightmares about the PI system.


Where Next for PI at DCC?

Application Frameworks– The new structure of PI will permit us to achieve the

following:• Plant-scale material and energy balances• Further integration with SAP using Sigmafine in

conjunction with Rlink

High availability across the Enterprise using VM’s (virtual machines)


WAKE UP!!!

Questions?

Todd M. McQuiston, Dow Corning [email protected]

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The PI System – A Vital Technology