White paper:

Improve process performance using an innovative approach

Executive Summary

  • Companies, over the past decades, have invested heavily in industrial automation. In 1991 alone, $40 billion was invested in U.S. industrial automation. As a result, an enormous quantity of data has been and is currently being accumulated, analyzed, and stored. So much in fact, that it is impossible for a human to manually manage for the achievement of outcomes desired in the time frames allotted. Instead, valuable time is consumed searching for an answer through a myriad of information, and time can be directly correlated to money in a complex process environment.
  • Tools and applications have been developed to automate some of the data and information, but without an intelligent framework, many of these tools are not able to provide the process efficiency improvements and profitability required. In addition to automation, process knowledge must be applied to the information to provide a context for the content. The contextual content or knowledge derived from automation and applied through an intelligent framework makes the application of standards and best practices easier to utilize throughout the organization.
  • Integration Objects, through its deep domain knowledge and industry expertise, has developed a new intelligent framework that puts data, information, and more importantly knowledge at the fingertips of the users. Finally, companies can be assured the information and knowledge made available from the process floor level to the executive suite through an intelligent integrated framework is not only relevant, but also provides value for their investment.
  • KnowledgeNet (KNet) from Integration Objects focuses on where to get data, information, and knowledge, for applications, rather than focusing on accumulating data. KNet is complementary to the plant data historians and other databases already in place, providing additional capabilities for integration, improvement of the process visibility, and reasoning for decision-making.
  • KNet provides tools to enable improving the performance visibility of the enterprise, which supports the linkage of business decisions with operational goals. It allows users and partners to institutionalize best practices while organizing knowledge and transforming data into graphical views. Therefore, the KNet solution simplifies and improves visibility at every level of the business and plant computing hierarchy enabling process efficiencies and empowers users across the enterprise.
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