Turning Performance Monitoring into Performance Improvement
by Chris McNabb
Matrikon Control Performance Solutions
About the Author
Chris McNabb has over 20 years experience in the process control field. During that
time, he has worked in several operating plants (in R&D and corporate engineering)
and for a handful of software companies. He has a degree in Chemical Engineering
from the University of Waterloo in Canada and Masters and PhD degrees in Chemical
Engineering from the University of Texas in Austin. Chris joined Matrikon in 2009
and is the Manager of North American Control Performance
Solutions.
Contact the author
Performance monitoring vendors have historically focused on the technical
and visual aspects of their solutions. Unfortunately, the simple act of
looking at performance information does not drive the decisions or action
that will ultimately lead to success.
Performance monitoring can be more than an interesting exercise in collecting
information. With the right solution, you can cross the chasm from monitoring
performance to applying performance monitoring to:
- Understand current performance relative to business objectives and drive “course corrections” where necessary
- Anticipate problems and potential disruptions to operations
- Take the right action to keep facilities operating at peak performance
Performance monitoring technology, particularly as it is applied to controllers,
has really matured over the past decade. But it is still often misunderstood.
I recall explaining a particular performance index to a young engineer a few
years back and she replied that it must have been developed by "someone with too
much time on their hands." I had to laugh because it really clarified the fact
that most people don't really understand the core of what 'performance monitoring'
is trying to achieve. Let me take a moment to clarify what distinguishes
'performance monitoring' from the simple act of monitoring process conditions.
First and foremost, performance metrics enable us to anticipate problems very early
in their development. Matrikon has applied research that shows that multiple related
measurements provide a much earlier indication of trouble than single measurements
alone. If I told you that your car's fuel efficiency has dropped by 50%, would you
worry? Would you take it into the shop? I think you would probably answer that it
depends on the driving conditions. Have you been driving your SUV through city streets
or trying to scale the Rocky Mountains? The point is if we let fuel efficiency alone
dictate our decision making, we will either make too many trips to the shop (false
positives) or wait too long to react. Good metrics allow you to act early and act
with confidence.
Secondly, performance metrics need to be specific to a single issue or at least a
subset of problems. An excellent example of this is our valve performance metric.
Take a look at the following two trends in Figures 1 and 2. Both show a process
variable cycling up and down wasting energy and wearing out equipment. One of them
is cycling because of an upstream problem while the other is cycling because it has
a damaged valve. Can you tell which is which? (Hint: our valve damage metric was 5
times higher for the one on the right.)
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| Figure 1 - Trend for valve performance |
Figure 2 - Trend for valve performance |
Thirdly, performance metrics need to be actionable. Bill Cosby has a classic comedy
routine in which he takes his car to a local mechanic, tells him it’s "broken" and
then refuses to elaborate, much to the mechanic's growing frustration. Matrikon will
never stop at telling you simply that your process is broken. Our approach is to
give a top-down diagnostic-centric analysis. By that, we mean we don't just toss
a collection of numbers at you. Instead, we start by asking if the controller is
doing an adequate job. If not, then we dig deeper to discover the underlying root cause.
Matrikon realized early on that our customers need quality before quantity when it
comes to performance monitoring technology. We don't throw a dog's breakfast of
statistics at the user and let them sort it out. Instead, we have chosen to invest
a great deal of effort and research to cultivate a select list of metrics which
strictly adhere to the requirements listed above; they are anticipatable, specific
and actionable.
As a past customer and researcher in the area of control performance monitoring,
I was drawn by Matrikon's strong theoretical background. I personally performed
several pilots where I verified that Matrikon’s performance metrics correctly
pointed to poorly performing control assets more than 90% of the time. That said,
a strong theoretical foundation is only a solid base on which we build a complete
solution. Our integrated, collaborative workflow sits on that base and is critical
to delivering value. For example, all of those incredibly sophisticated monitoring
systems in use in modern operating rooms have no value unless we include a trained
surgical team in the mix.
Our customers have tried several different approaches for integrating performance
monitoring tools into the daily lives of plant personnel—each with varying levels
of success. We discovered early on that it was naive to think that a single approach
would work well in all situations. AbitibiBowater’s Bridgewater operation in the UK
provides an excellent example of this. Their initial attempt at keeping control
performance management a maintenance- and process-controlled program met with very
little success.
Figure 3 - 2006: Maintenance Driven
A year later, the team was reorganized under the leadership of the operations department
and expanded to involve process engineers, production supervisors, team leaders and
operators.
Figure 4 - 2007 to Present: Operations Driven
Why did this effort struggle under process control leadership while similar teams in
other companies have succeeded? Many factors contributed and it is hard to nail it
down to one or two when the situation changes from industry to industry and site to
site. That being said, we can list several characteristics of a successful performance
management business process:
- Formalize responsibility: informal performance management processes evaporate when the originators move on to bigger and better things
- Divide and conquer: distribute responsibility to the appropriate individuals – relying on a single energetic individual to carry the ball entirely isn't sustainable
- Track activity: find a easy way to track activity – some areas will show improvement immediately, while others will be less obvious. Tracking activity is one way to make sure progress is being made on long term improvement efforts
- Track performance impact: celebrate success; a leading cause of programs that falter is that the teams don't do a good enough job publishing their successes, large and small. At the end of the day, we all need to justify our existence to a certain extent.
Figure 5 - Weekly Workflow
This last bullet about 'tracking performance impact' has the implicit requirement
that we report appropriate metrics to describe the impact in meaningful terms.
Recognize that different people will define impact in different ways. For example,
a control engineer or maintenance technician might view a reduction in controller
activity as having a very positive impact since it implies stability and less equipment
wear. However, a production manager might not see the value in reduced controller
activity at all. Instead, he needs to see that the maintenance effort has increased
plant capacity and improved efficiency.
This is where Matrikon's partnership with our clients really becomes evident. Our
support of client success does not stop at providing training and best practice
documents. We are constantly asking ourselves how we can expand the scope or our
technology to play a larger role in these work processes. In the past, this has
been limited to automated email notification and web based tools to track and
document follow-up activities. But our work continues; stay tuned for future releases
which will extend our reach to include interactive trouble shooting and diagnostic
tools, intelligent notification services, automated reports that quantify the impact
of maintenance or engineering changes, and more.
One of our goals at Matrikon is to grow performance monitoring into a complete
business process that our customers will recognize as being critical to their
business. And as our customers' businesses grow and evolve, so will our technology.