(111a) ProcessMD: Capturing the Heartbeat of our Plants through Advanced Analytics

The Industrial Gases market is characterized by production plants that balance both capital and operating costs along with the important need for the continual supply of product.  It is therefore critical to maximize asset productivity while concurrently maintaining baseline reliability requirements.  In response to these operational objectives, companies like Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. have sought to acquire the requisite process insight through advanced data modeling and analytics. 

With the advent of digital control systems and data historians, manufacturing companies now have a preponderance of data; however, these high-dimensional datasets are often characterized by low signal-to-noise ratio along with a high degree of correlation.  Advanced analytics in the form of state-of-the-art statistical multivariate techniques can denoise process signals, as well as capture the correlation amongst these signals, transforming huge plant datasets into actionable information. 

ProcessMD, a patented web-based, predictive-monitoring and fault-diagnostic platform, has been developed to provide foresight and insight about asset performance.  At the foundation of this novel technology platform are predictive models built uniquely for each plant or piece of equipment.  These data-driven, auto-adaptive models provide advanced alerts of subtle abnormalities and deviations from expected behavior across a whole plant or its specific components.  The predictive analytics focuses on diagnostics to enable proactive intervention – unlocking value from data.