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EP-4741965-A2 - MANUFACTURING SYSTEM FOR MONITORING AND/OR CONTROLLING ONE OR MORE CHEMICAL PLANT(S)

EP4741965A2EP 4741965 A2EP4741965 A2EP 4741965A2EP-4741965-A2

Abstract

The disclosure relates to a system (10) for monitoring and/or controlling one or more chemical plant(s) (12), wherein the system (10) comprises a first processing layer (14) associated with the chemical plant (12) and communicatively coupled to a second processing layer (16), wherein the first processing layer (14) and the second processing layer (16) are configured in a secure network (18, 20), wherein the first processing layer (14) provides process or asset specific data (22) of the chemical plant (12) to the second processing layer (16), wherein the second processing layer (16) is configured to contextualize process or asset specific data to generate plant specific data and to provide plant specific data (24) of one or more chemical plant(s) (12) to an interface (26) to an external network.

Inventors

  • VAN LOON, Bart
  • DE CAIGNY, Jan
  • Gau, Sebastian
  • ENGEL, DANIEL

Assignees

  • BASF SE

Dates

Publication Date
20260513
Application Date
20201208

Claims (15)

  1. A system (10) for monitoring and/or controlling one or more manufacturing facility(ies) based on chemical processes, wherein the system (10) comprises a first processing layer (14) and a second processing layer (16), wherein the first processing layer (14) is associated with the manufacturing facility and communicatively coupled to the second processing layer (16), wherein the first processing layer (14) and the second processing layer (16) are configured inside a secure network (18, 20), wherein the first processing layer (14) is configured to provide process or asset specific data (22) of the manufacturing facility to the second processing layer (16), wherein the second processing layer (16) is configured to contextualize process or asset specific data to generate plant specific data and to provide plant specific data (24) of one or more manufacturing facility(ies) to an interface (26) to an external network.
  2. The system (10) of claim 1, wherein the second processing layer (16) comprises an intermediate processing system (34) and a process management system (32), wherein the first processing layer (14) and the process management system (32) are communicatively coupled via the intermediate processing system (34).
  3. The system (10) of claim 2, wherein the intermediate processing system (34) is configured to collect process or asset specific data provided by the first processing layer (14), wherein the process management system (32) is configured to provide plant specific data of one or more manufacturing facility to the interface to the external network.
  4. The system (10) of claims 2 or 3, wherein the intermediate processing system (34) is configured to contextualize data by mapping heterogenous process or asset specific data to a homogeneous data format on plant level, wherein the process management system (32) is configured to contextualize the plant specific data provided by the intermediate processing system (34).
  5. The system (10) of any of the preceding claims, wherein the second processing layer (16), preferably the process management system (32), is associated with more than one manufacturing facility.
  6. The system (10) of any of the preceding claims, wherein the system is configured to stagger data contextualization across processing layers (14, 16, 32, 34, 30) with each layer mapping context information available in the respective layer.
  7. The system (10) of any of the preceding claims, wherein the second processing layer (16, 32, 34), preferably the process management system (32), is configured to provide plant specific data (24) from one or more manufacturing facility(ies) to an external processing layer (30).
  8. The system (10) of claim 7, wherein the plant specific data is provided between manufacturing facilities across a manufacturing chain via the second processing layer (16), preferably the process management system (32), or the external processing layer (30).
  9. The system (10) of claim 7 or 8, wherein the second processing layer (16, 32, 34), preferably the process management system (32), is configured to manage data transfer to and/or from the external processing layer (30) in real-time or on demand.
  10. The system (10) of claims 7 to 9, wherein the second processing layer (16, 32, 34), preferably the process management system (32), is configured to store or to manage access to historical data for a first time window, wherein the external processing layer (30) is configured to store historical data for a second time window, wherein the first time window is shorter than the second time window
  11. The system (10) of claims 7 to 10, wherein the second processing layer (16, 32, 34), preferably the process management system (32), is configured to host and/or orchestrate process applications relating to core plant operations, wherein the external processing layer (30) is configured to host and/or orchestrate process applications relating to non-core plant operations.
  12. The system (10) of any of the preceding claims, wherein a monitoring device (44) is communicatively coupled to the second processing layer (16, 32, 34), preferably the process management system (32), or the external processing layer (30), wherein the monitoring device (44) is configured to transfer monitoring data to the second processing layer (16, 32, 34), preferably the process management system (32), or the external processing layer (30).
  13. The system (10) of claim 12, wherein the second processing layer (16, 32, 34), preferably the process management system (32), or the external processing layer (30) are configured to manage monitoring devices (44).
  14. The system (10) of claim 11 or 13, wherein the monitoring device (44), the second processing layer (16, 32, 34), preferably the process management system (32), or the external processing layer (30) are configured to tag monitoring data provided by the monitoring device (44) unidirectional.
  15. A method for monitoring and/or controlling one or more manufacturing facility based on chemical processes using a system (10) comprising a first processing layer (14) and a second processing layer (16), wherein the first processing layer (14) is associated with the manufacturing facility and communicatively coupled to the second processing layer (16), wherein the first processing layer (14) and the second processing layer (16) are configured inside a secure network, wherein the method comprises the steps of: - providing process or asset specific data of the manufacturing facility from the first processing layer (14) to the second processing layer (16), - contextualizing process or asset specific data via the second processing layer (16) to generate plant specific data, - providing plant specific data of one or more manufacturing facility(ies) via the second processing layer (12) to an interface to an external network, - monitoring and/or controlling one or more manufacturing facility(ies) via the first processing layer (14) or via the second processing layer (16) based on the process or asset specific data or the plant specific data.

Description

FIELD The invention relates to a system and a method for monitoring and/or controlling one or more chemical plant(s) including a first processing layer associated with the chemical plant and communicatively coupled to a second processing layer. BACKGROUND Chemical production is a highly sensitive production environment particularly with respect to security. Chemical plants typically include multiple assets to produce the chemical product. Multiple sensors are distributed in such plants for monitoring or controlling purposes and collect masses of data. As such chemical production is a data heavy environment. However, to date the gain from such data to increase production efficiency in one or multiple chemical plants has not been fully leveraged. Applying new technologies in cloud computing and big data analytics is hence of great interest. Unlike other manufacturing industries, however, process industry is subject to very high security standards. For this reason, computing infrastructures are typically siloed with highly restrictive access to monitoring and control systems. Owing to such security standards, latency and availability considerations contravene a simple migration of to date embedded control systems to e.g. a cloud computing system. Bridging the gap between highly proprietary industrial manufacturing systems and cloud technologies is one of the major challenges in process industry. WO2016065493 discloses a client device and a system for data acquisition and pre-processing of process-related mass data from at least one CNC machine or an industrial robot and for transmitting said process-related data to at least one data recipient, e.g. a cloud- based server. The client device comprises at least one first data communication interface to at least one controller of the CNC machine or industrial robot, for continuously recording hard-realtime process-related data via at least one realtime data channel, and for recording non-realtime process-related data via at least one non-realtime data channel. The client device further comprises at least one data processing unit data-mapping at least the recorded non-realtime data to the recorded hard-realtime data to aggregate a contextualized set of process-related data. Moreover, the client device comprises at least one second data interface for transmitting the contextualized set of process-related data to the data recipient and for further data communication with the data recipient. WO2019138120 discloses a method for improving a chemical production process. A plurality of derivative chemical products are produced through a derivative chemical production process based on at least some derivative process parameters at a respective chemical production facility, which chemical production facilities each comprises a separate respective facility intranet. At least some respective derivative process parameters are measured from the derivative chemical production process by a respective production sensor computer system within each facility intranet. A process model for simulating the derivative chemical production process is recorded in a process model management computer system outside the facility intranets. US20160320768A1 discloses an example network environment for monitoring plant processes with system computers operating as a root-cause analyzer. The system computers communicate with the data server to access collected data for measurable process variables from a historian database. The data server is communicatively coupled to a distributed control system (DCS) in turn communicating collected data to the data server over communications network. The object of the present invention relates to a highly scalable and flexible computing infrastructure for process industry, which adheres to the high security standards. SUMMARY A system, preferably a distributed computing system, for monitoring and/or controlling one or more chemical plant(s) is proposed, wherein the system comprises first and a second processing layer, wherein the first processing layer is associated with the chemical plant and communicatively coupled to the second processing layer, optionally wherein the first processing layer and the second processing layer are situated, hosted or configured in or inside a secure network or associated with a secure network, wherein the first processing layer is configured to provide process or asset specific data of the chemical plant to the second processing layer, wherein the second processing layer is configured to contextualize process or asset specific data to generate plant specific data and to provide plant specific data of one or more chemical plant(s) to an interface to an external network. A method, preferably a computer-implemented method, for monitoring and/or controlling one or more chemical plant(s) with a system, preferably a distributed computing system, comprising a first and a second processing layer, wherein the first processing layer is associ