PI Asset Framework

Technical Library / Reference

Historical technical reference

Recovered from Automated Results 2017 website; archival source: /pi/pi-asset-framework.aspx; capture: 20171031201708.

Asset Framework

PI Asset Framework

Companies struggle with the growth of available data and its increasing volume; the data is received from many data sources and stored in islands of information throughout the organization. One department might have some of the information about an aspect of the plant in one data store while another department has additional information about that same asset. Real-time data for an asset might be stored in a Data Historian while the static information is stored in a custom database or in an Excel spreadsheet. As a result, no one sees the whole picture and/or it is difficult to put all that information together to detect correlations or significant shifts. Companies must find a way to organize, publish, and manage their data to allow users to easily search for information they need to make critical decisions.

PI Asset Framework (PI AF) enables an organization to define a consistent representation of its assets (Buildings, Areas, Units, Equipment, Instruments, Sensors, Valves, etc.) and provides structure for the information. It is a single container for asset-centric models, hierarchies, objects, equipment (elements), and properties (attributes). It integrates, contextualizes, refines, references, and further analyzes data from multiple sources. It includes one or more PI Data Archives and non-PI sources such as external Relational Databases.

PI AF can expose this rich data in PI Visualization Tools such as PI Coresight, PI DataLink, PI Notifications, or PI ProcessBook where they can be used to build reuseable displays, run intermediate and roll-up calculations, and help effectively visualize important information in a form that is digestable by the end-user.

PI Asset Framework hierarchies and models:

Name plate information

Flow rate

Temperature

Density

Furthermore, each attribute can be assigned a specific Unit of Measure and convert it to a Universal Standard of Measure.

PI Asset Framework can support a nearly unlimited number of elements (several millions) and each element can support numerous attributes and child elements. It allows users to build their elements in whatever way best suites them.

PI Asset Framework Components:

In addition to asset hierarchies, the following components are used to build on top of this hierarchy to take action against its attributes:

PI Analysis Services

Event Frames

Notifications

Models

Transfers