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November 18, 2020

GE Digital’s Proficy Analytics Provide Plant Engineers with ML, Analytics for Closed-Loop Optimization

SAN RAMON, Calif., Nov. 18, 2020 — GE Digital today announced the release of two new Proficy Analytics solutions, Proficy CSense 8.0 and Proficy Sensor Health. These unique software applications offer industrial companies a path to drive efficient operations, increase product quality, minimize downtime, and reduce risk related to compliance and safety.

Proficy CSense is proven industrial analytics software that improves asset and process performance with a Process Digital Twin that helps industrial organizations meet the challenges of fast-changing demand, regulatory requirements and operator reaction times. Process Digital Twins create models of ‘the best way’ to run a process in a given environment. By identifying the most optimal process, plant operators can ensure they are consistently delivering against quality, cost and volume objectives.

In many plants, engineers would need several analytics software packages or a team of data scientists to help them take their domain expertise and do analysis of the data, simulate the data to create certain situations, set up monitoring routines, and then be able to build predictive analytics on that data. They can then take the results of those analytics and feed them back into the control process in order to create that continuous loop of optimization.

A unique product, Proficy CSense allows these critical users to do all of that with one easy-to-use, graphical tool with a powerful analytics engine. It allows engineers to easily analyze, monitor, predict, simulate, and optimize – with process changes driven automatically to an organization’s automation systems. The new Version 8.0 makes it even easier to install, analyze data, develop analytics, and visualize results.

Benefits of Proficy CSense include:

  • Reduce process variability – Combine data and use analytics and machine learning to improve process variability.
  • Speed troubleshooting – Use data to troubleshoot causes of asset and process performance issues rapidly.
  • Increase engineering productivity – Proficy CSense’ visual analytics accelerate problem detection and improve efficiency.
  • Decrease downtime – Monitor and ensure health and performance of base-layer PID control loops.
  • Optimize with a Process Digital Twin – Mine new insight from industrial data to maximize return on assets.
  • Improve data integrity – Validate and clean raw sensor data at the source to ensure integrity of downstream systems

Used around the world, Proficy CSense is proven in diverse industries including Food & Beverage, Mining, Automotive, Metals, Water/Wastewater, Chemicals, and more. As examples, Proficy CSense and its Process Digital Twin technology have helped a water utility predict pump failure up to 16 days in advance, reduced process variation by 40% at a base metals refinery, and decreased customer complaints 33% at a major food manufacturer.

New Sensor Health App

“We have worked closely with many customers to create specific solutions to meet their analytics needs and drive digital transformation,” said Richard Kenedi, General Manager, Manufacturing and Digital Plant, GE Digital. “One of the things that we learned was that a lot of customers have challenges with sensors. Sensors can be the weakest link in the data chain.  A bad sensor means bad data, and bad data results, no alarm, and possibly a bad decision or missing a critical deviation.”

GE Digital turned this voice of customer information into a new smart app called Proficy Sensor Health which monitors and detects sensor data abnormalities with AI/ML. Proficy Sensor Health continually monitors and analyzes sensor data, learning patterns, applying intelligence, and automatically generating alerts to speed response. Users can also target anomalies and quickly minimize their potential impact and ensure clean sensor data for downstream analytics and optimization.

Proficy Sensor Health is an easy-to-use app that does not require programming, IT, or data scientists. It embeds with GE Digital’s Proficy Operations Hub, allowing mapping to model elements representing historical data tags for sensors. With information and alerts at a glance, users can respond faster to faulty sensors and deliver on outcomes like increased product quality, minimized downtime, reduce compliance and safety risks, reduced scrap, recalls, and costs, and ultimately speed time-to-value.

“Digital transformation is a mandatory journey for manufacturers and processors to optimize operations and efficiency, improve quality, reduce unscheduled downtime, and fulfill safety and compliance requirements,” according to Craig Resnick, Vice President at ARC Advisory Group. “Solutions such as Proficy CSense, with its Digital Twin capabilities, help industrial companies to better monitor, analyze, simulate, predict, and optimize processes. When combined with Proficy Sensor Health to protect the integrity of the sensor data, this solution will help to ensure continuous improvement based on fact-based intelligence and bring operational resilience.”

More information about Proficy CSense can be found here. Information about Proficy Sensor Health is located here.

About GE Digital

GE Digital is transforming how industry solves its toughest challenges. GE Digital’s mission is to bring simplicity, speed and scale to its customers’ digital transformation activities, with software that helps them to better operate, analyze and optimize their business processes. GE Digital’s product portfolio – including grid optimization and analytics, asset and operations performance management, and manufacturing operations and automation – helps industrial companies in the utility, power generation, oil & gas and manufacturing sectors put their industrial data to work. For more information, visit www.ge.com/digital.


Source: GE Digital

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