Managing adaptive process monitoring: New tools and case examples

Maintenance and long-term performance of process monitoring solutions is a surprisingly rare subject both at academic discussions and commercial negotiations. Traditionally the commercial focus is on investment price-feature ratio. Accordingly, academic focus on the process monitoring solutions has mainly been on features providing short-term peak performance rather than optimizing reliable long-term performance. This paper discusses real-life management and up-keeping challenges of a process monitoring solution. Industrial challenges as well as process monitoring methodology is reviewed. A novel, adaptive approach for process monitoring is introduced. Requirements and a solution for statistical modeling of multi-variable relationships are discussed in particular. To emphasize practical benefits and scalability of the solution introduced, case examples are given. The present authors conclude that the process monitoring solution proposed includes the key elements of a long-term manageable process monitoring solution. Furthermore, the case examples given illustrate the practical reliability and performance of the solution.