June 29, 2022 - Control Station announced publication of the Summer 2022 release of its award-winning PlantESP solution. The solution now includes a representational state transfer (REST) application programming interface (API) that simplifies the consumption of PlantESP calculations by other advanced analytical tools. With the addition of the REST API and other solution enhancements, PlantESP further distinguishes itself as a highly innovative solution for plant-wide process analytics and optimization. The industrial automation market has witnessed significant growth in both the volume of available data sources and the number of tools used in the analysis of that very same data.
Unfortunately, many industrial tools lack options for cross-platform communication and limit access to their calculations. By opening a direct link to its structured calculation results, PlantESP makes it easy for other analytics and business intelligence solutions to capitalize on a manufacturer’s regulatory controller performance data. “Beyond an application’s analytical insights, manufacturers are looking for easy ways to consume and combine data with other sources that represent different aspects of a plant’s operations,” commented Brett Beauregard, Control Station’s Director of Product Development. “The availability of REST allows PlantESP to contribute to a manufacturer’s broader data analytics and business intelligence initiative.”
PlantESP monitors PID control loops on a plant-wide basis, empowering manufacturing staff to proactively identify underperforming regulatory control systems and to isolate the root-causes that contribute to production inefficiency and unplanned downtime. It leverages existing process data stored within a production facility’s historian, and it complements both regulatory and supervisory control solutions from other automation suppliers such as ABB, Emerson, Honeywell, Rockwell Automation, Schneider Electric, Siemens, and Yokogawa.
The REST API available as a feature within PlantESP Plus permits users to share calculated results with advanced interaction and visualization tools such as Seeq and TrendMiner as well as with analytics and business intelligence solutions like Power BI, SAS, and Tableau. The Summer 2022 release includes a wide array of feature enhancements beyond the REST API that provide unique value to users and administrators alike. PlantESP’s steady, meaningful buildup of capabilities reflects the industrial automation market’s demand for optimization solutions that combine powerful analytics and ease-of-use. Control Station continues to show significant year-over-year growth in demand for PlantESP and other of the company’s process optimization offerings.