Distributed Historian Interface System for Industrial Data Management
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional industrial control systems face challenges in efficiently collecting, managing, and integrating historical data across multiple levels of an industrial enterprise, due to loose integration with standard control systems, complex configuration, and security issues with historian components not being tightly integrated with the enterprise's security framework.
Innovation Solution
A distributed and scalable historian data interface system that provides a common protocol and interface for managing and accessing historian data across multiple levels, using a data model that models the industrial enterprise and facilitates data aggregation, storage, and retrieval based on relevance, age, and access patterns, while ensuring security and efficient data management.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If PC-historians are applied on the back-end of system design with loose integration, then data collection can be performed, but configuration and deployment become more complex and costly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent integrates the historian component directly into the controller architecture, merging previously separate functions (controller and historian) into a unified system. This integration eliminates the need for loose coupling and back-end application, thereby reducing configuration complexity while maintaining data collection performance.
Solution Approach 2:
The controller is designed to perform multiple functions including both real-time control and historical data management. By making the controller universal and capable of hosting historian functions natively, the system eliminates the need for separate PC-historian installations, simplifying deployment while preserving data collection capabilities.
2Quantity of substance
If PC-historians are loosely integrated with control systems, then data storage can be achieved, but security integration with enterprise framework becomes problematic
Solution Approach 1:
By merging the historian functionality into the controller's native architecture, the system ensures that security management is unified. The controller's integrated security framework automatically applies to historian data access, eliminating security gaps that arise from loose integration between separate PC-historian and control system components.
3Ease of operation
If multiple distributed historians are used across enterprise levels, then data accessibility is improved, but system complexity increases
Solution Approach 1:
The patent implements a standardized historian interface that can be deployed at multiple enterprise levels (controller, plant, enterprise). This universal interface design allows consistent data access methods across all levels, improving ease of operation while the standardized approach actually reduces overall system complexity compared to heterogeneous solutions.
Solution Approach 2:
The system divides the enterprise into hierarchical levels (controller, plant, enterprise) with historians at each level segmenting data management responsibilities. This segmentation allows local data accessibility while maintaining a manageable system architecture through clear division of functions across levels.
4Adaptability or versatility
If historians are applied outside control system framework, then data collection flexibility is maintained, but integration with enterprise security framework is compromised
Solution Approach 1:
The historian functionality is merged into the controller framework, ensuring that data collection flexibility is maintained through the controller's programmable nature while simultaneously achieving seamless security framework integration. The unified architecture eliminates the security integration problems that arise from applying historians outside the control system framework.
Data Source
AI summary
A distributed and scalable data historian framework is provided that allows historian functionality to be efficiently incorporated at various levels of an industrial enterprise. The framework includes a historian data interface system that provides a single interface and common protocol for configuring, managing, and viewing historian data located throughout a network of historian distributed across the industrial enterprise. The historian data interface system leverages a data model that models the enterprise and sources of historian data to facilitate fast and efficient retrieval of desired historian data. By unifying the distributed historians under a common framework, the data model can facilitate enterprise-level management of historian data collection and storage.