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Preface
TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 10 - Flexible Measurement Point Management in an Industrial Automatic Supervision System
10Flexible Measurement Point Management in an Industrial Automatic Supervision SystemIndustrial automatic supervision system gives us a significantly better view of the process condition and provides operators with tighter control as well. The chapter primarily discusses the measurement point (MP) management in an industrial automatic supervision system based on the reconfiguration concept using object-oriented software engineering methodology. The overall architecture of the automatic supervision system is introduced. The crucial issues regarding MP management, such as MP configuration, task configuration, dynamic configuration of MPs and tasks, and system execution, etc., are discussed in detail. An illustrative example on the design and testing of a serial port driver is also presented. The design strategy for MP management turns out to be successful, since the automatic supervision system has resulted in more efficient use of system resources and therefore greater operator productivity. 10.1 INTRODUCTION Industrial automatic supervision technologies are recognized as a useful means of preventing anticipated incipient failures occurred in plant equipment. The technologies allow for preventive maintenance such that remedial actions may be scheduled in advance to minimize the loss caused by production upset. Thus far, many industrial supervision systems have been developed for such a purpose [2, 4, 5, 12-15, 18, 20, 25]. These systems have demonstrated that they can bring significant benefits and profits to various industries. However, oftentimes they are not only expensive, but also inflexible. For instance, those systems are usually designed for specific industrial supervision tasks. Each time when new hardware is added to the existing supervision system, its software must be more or less re-implemented to satisfy the new hardware demands. Furthermore, the supervision system should meet the ever-changing user requirements. Reconfiguration and flexibility are the main concerns in designing such flexible industrial supervision systems, which are capable of adapting to the varying customer needs and incorporating new hardware without needing extensive extra investment. Moreover, the time and cost of implementing and maintaining traditional solutions are eliminated because no custom coding is necessary anymore. Therefore, the development of such reconfigurable and flexible software for various industrial supervision environments is very beneficial. One of the features of the state-of-the-art industrial control and supervision systems is a growing degree of functional and hardware integration. Effective implementation and organization of inexpensive but reliable data acquisition, processing, and presentation is a highly challenging task in building flexible industrial supervision systems. More recently, the concept of reconfiguration has been introduced into the fields of industrial measurement, supervision, and control [3, 6, 7, 10, 21-23, 27]. A conspicuous feature of such configurable systems with their modular expandable hardware and software components is their suitability for small-, medium-, and large-scale system integration. In general, industrial reconfigurable supervision software is used to realize the industry parameter monitoring and control, large-scale telemetering, remote communication, remote control, remote image monitoring, data processing, search and query, network sharing, and so on. Configurable industrial supervision software normally has the following application domains: large-scale parameter monitoring for public city facilities, such as gas and water supply, electric power, and transportation; comprehensive monitoring management system in intelligent buildings, which includes building data gathering and security monitoring, etc; power monitoring and environmental monitoring in telecommunication systems; automated large rotating machinery monitoring; and factory product testing and analysis. |
