Asset Groups 101 - Part 1

[Patrick]

Have you ever wanted to scale calculations in Seeq across different assets without having to delve into external systems or write code to generate asset structures?  Is your process data historian a giant pool of tags which you need to have organized and named in a human readable format?  Do you want to take advantage of Seeq features such as Asset Swapping and Treemaps, but do not have an existing Asset structure to leverage?  If the answer is yes, Asset Groups can help!

Beginning in Seeq version R52 Asset Groups were added to configure collections of items such as Equipment, Operating Lines, KPIs, etc via a simple point-and-click tool.  Users can leverage Asset Groups to easily organize and scale their analyses directly in Workbench, as well as apply Seeq Asset-centric tools such as Treemaps and Tables across Assets.

What is an Asset Group?

An Asset Group is a collection of assets (listed in rows) and associated parameters called “Attributes” (listed in columns).  If your assets share common parameters, Asset Groups can be a great way to organize and scale analyses instead of re-creating each analysis separately.

  

Assets can be anything users want them to be.  It could be a piece of equipment, geographical region, business unit, KPI, etc.  Asset Groups serve to organize and map associated parameters (Attributes) for each Asset in the group.

Each Asset can have one or several Attributes mapped to it.   Attributes are parameters that are common to all the assets and are mapped to tags from one or many data sources.

Examples of Asset/Attribute combinations include:

Asset	Attribute(s)
Pump	Suction Pressure, Discharge Pressure, Flow, Curve ID, Specific Gravity
Heat Exchanger	Cold Inlet T, Cold Outlet T, Hot Inlet T, Hot Outlet T, Surface Area
Production Line	Active Alarms, Widgets per Hour, % of time in Spec

 

 

 

 

It’s very important to configure the name of the common Attribute to be the same for all Assets, even if the underlying tag or datasource is not.  Using standard nomenclature for Attributes (Columns) enables Seeq to later compare and seamlessly “swap” between assets without having to worry about the underlying tag name or calculation.  

Do This:	Do Not Do This:

How to Configure Asset Groups in Seeq

Let’s create an Asset Group to organize a few process tags from different locations. 

While Asset Groups support pre-existing data tree structures (such as OSI PI Asset Framework), the following example will assume the tags to not be structured and added manually from a pool of existing process tags.

NOTE:  Asset Groups require an Asset Group license.  For versions prior to R54, they also have to be enabled in the Seeq Administrator Configuration page.  Contact your Seeq Administrator for details.

1)    In the “Data” tab, create a new Asset Group:

2)    Specify Asset Group name and add Assets

You can rename the assets by clicking on the respective name in the first column.  In this case, we'll define Locations 1-3.

 

3)    Map the source tags

a.    Rename “Column 1” by clicking on the text and entering a new name
b.    Click on the (+) icon to bring up the search window and add the tag corresponding to each asset.  You can use wildcards and/or regular expressions to narrow your search.
 
c.    Repeat mapping of the tags for the other assets until there’s a green checkmark in each row

d.    Additional source tags can be used by clicking on “Add Column” button in the toolbar

 

In this case, we will add a column for Relative Humidity and map a tag for each of the Locations

4)    Save the Asset Group

5)    Trend using the newly created Asset Group

The newly created Asset Group will now be available in the Data pane and can be used for navigation and trending

a.    Navigate to “Location 1” and add the items to the display pane by clicking on them.  You can also change the display range to 7 days to show a bit more data

      

b.    Notice the Assets Column now listed in the Details pane showing from which Asset the Signal originates

We can also add the Asset Path to the Display pane by clicking on Labels and checking the desired display configuration settings (Name, Unit of Measure, etc).

 

 

c.    Swap to Location 2 (or 3) using the Asset Swapping functionality.  In the Data tab, navigate up one level in the Asset Group, then click the Swap icon ( ) to swap the display items from a different location

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   Notice how Seeq will automatically swap the display items

6)    Create a “High Temperature” Condition

Calculations configured from Asset Group Items will “follow” that asset, which can help in scaling analyses.  Let’s create a “High Temperature” condition.

a.    Using “Tools -> Identify -> Value Search” create a condition when the Temperature exceeds 100

b.    Click “Execute” to generate the Condition
c.    Notice the condition has been generated and is automatically affiliated with the Asset from which the Signals were selected

d.    Swap to a different Asset and notice the “High Temperature” Condition will swap using the same condition criteria but with the signals from the swapped Asset

 

Note:  Calculations can also be configured in the Asset Group directly, which can be advantageous if different condition criteria need to be defined for each asset. This topic will be covered in Part 2 of this series.

7)    Create a Treemap
Asset Groups enables users to combine monitoring across assets using Seeq’s Treemap functionality.  

a.    Set up a Treemap for the Assets in the Group by switching to the Treemap view in the Seeq Workbench toolbar.

b.    Click on the color picker for the “High Temperature” condition to select a color to display when that condition is active in the given time range.  

(if you have more than one Condition in the Details pane, repeat this step for each Condition)

c.    A Treemap is generated for each Asset in the Asset Group.  Signal statistics can optionally be added by configuring the “Statistics” field in the toolbar.

Your tree map may differ depending on the source signal and time range selected.  The tree map will change color if the configured Condition triggers during the time period selected.

 

This covers the basics for Asset Groups.  Please check out Part 2 on how to configure calculations in Asset Groups and add them directly to the Hierarchy.  

Edited July 11, 2022 by Patrick