Advanced model-predictive control systems are now deployed in thousands of applications worldwide, delivering large financial benefits. Process changes, equipment aging, and changing economic conditions are just a few of the factors that drive the need to maintain controller models. aspenONE Advanced Process Control goes beyond simple Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) by providing features that support the full lifecycle of the APC application.

Keeping the controller on-line 99.5% of the time does not guarantee good performance. The key is to monitor the process and controller operation continuously. The performance monitoring features of the ACP enable efficient extraction of useful information from large volumes of operating data. It provides an expanding range of performance monitoring and diagnosis tools to help protect the benefits of advanced control.

Advanced control applications depend on a properly functioning regulatory control layer and that includes proper tuning of the associated PID loops. aspenONE APC sustainability technology provides effective monitoring and retuning of PID loops to ensure maximum performance of APC applications.

aspenONE APC provides integrated features to address the detection, diagnoses, and corrective action tasks required to keep APC applications operating at their peak. Our performance monitoring solution includes the ability to monitor remote APC applications using a web browser.

Detection

The three controller configurations are supported with a preconfigured set of KPIs that provide controller performance monitoring out-of-the-box. Users can add KPI definitions to provide operational measures. KPIs are supported with calculation scripting features that simplify the task of creating and managing operational KPIs.

Diagnoses

The sustainability features include drill-down tools to determine and isolate root causes for degrading performance.

Corrective Action

Most APC applications require some sort of periodic re-vamp of the underlying control models. When that is required, aspenONE APC provides features for streamline data collection for building new models and tools to automate many of the tasks associated with model building and revamps.

• Automated Testing
  Automated Step Testing simplifies and streamlines the task of collecting process data for model construction. It delivers model data with higher information content than manual testing, while significantly reducing the overall engineering effort. This feature combines a step generation engine with an embedded controller to enforce MV limits while keeping CVs within bounds.
• Adaptive Modeling
  Aspen Adaptive Modeling is part of AspenTech’s sustainability solution for APC. It automates the maintenance lifecycle of a controller by providing the ability to collect historical data, automate calculations for data cleaning, schedule online model quality assessments, and assess model quality for standard and custom KPIs. Aspen Adaptive Modeling is a core element of aspenONE Advanced Process Control applications.