Most installations of Flow are use case based, so to build our first project, we will do the same.
Use Case: Utility Consumption by Production Count
In our simulated juice factory, we desire to understand how much energy and water we consume when bottling our product.
Our goal is to measure total energy and water consumed per hour, per shift, and per day, as well as per batch of product.
To get started, let's connect to a Data Source.
Connecting to a Data Source
Flow reads data from Data Sources and publishes data to Data Consumers. These connections are managed from within the Data menu, located under the 'Data' tab on the right menu.
◇ From the right menu, select the 'Data' tab if not already selected.
◇ Right click on 'Data Sources' and select 'New' to expose the entire list of supported databases, servers, and connections.
◇ Select 'Flow Software' and 'Historian Simulator'.
◇ Connect to the included historian simulator by selecting 'Save'.
This action will automatically create and deploy the simulator (approximately 30 seconds), making it available both as an available Data Source listed within the Deployment tab in the left menu as well as a browsable namespace within the Data tab in the left menu.
◇ Expand the automatically added Data Sources component within the Deployment menu as well as the Data Sources listed within the Data menu.
◇ Click on Historian Simulator to begin browsing 'The Juice Factory' namespace. Notice there are four main areas within the historian. We will focus on Packaging and Filler 1 for this project.
◇ Double click on '110-JQ-001.PV' within the Filler 1 folder which represents Filler 1 Energy Usage, visible as a tooltip if you hoover over the tag name.
Since this is a historian simulator, this action will trigger Flow to backfill historical data for all Juice Factory tags. The backfill will begin with the past few days and will eventually provide 90 days of history. This action will take approximately 2 minutes and delay the display of historical data. Once backfill has completed, 2 hours of history will show for tag 110-JQ-001.PV in the Flow Workbench.
You can use the start time and stop date time picker components in the upper right portion of the Data Source Preview to expand the view of the data, as well as the + and - magnifying glass icons.
After entering new time periods in the date and time pickers, you can choose the dark grey circular arrow icon to refresh the view, or use the blue circular arrow icon to refresh from the start time to now.
Further, you can select the data table icon in the upper left portion of the window to see the raw data in table format, as well as use the cursor to click and drag on the trend line to perform a zoom.
◇ Familiarize yourself with the following Filler 1 tags by opening them and previewing the data:
Both the energy and the water tags are totalizers:
- 110-JQ-001.PV
- energy usage
- kWh
- 111-FQ-002.PV
- water supply totalizer
- hL
.
There is a tag dedicated to good units as well as rejected units:
- FL001.BottleCount
- good bottle counter
- bottles
- FL001.BottleCount.Reject
- reject bottle counter
- bottles
There are several process states (idle, setup, running, stopped, and CIP), as well as a tag that indicates what product was being run:
- FL001.State
- current state
- integer value, 0 thru 30
- 0 = idle
- 10 = setup
- 20 = running
- 21 - 29 = stopped
- 30 = CIP
- FL001.Product
- product type
- integer value, 1 thru 4
- 1 = apple
- 2 = cranberry
- 3 = grape
- 4 = orange
Step One: Building the Model and Creating an Event with Attributes
We cover how to create a basic information model in Flow as well as how to create an event, monitor a batch process, and record the type of product that was being produced.
Length - 10:12
Step Two: Deploy Metrics and Measures with Event and Calendar Context
Learn how to add tags to your model, create a new calculated tag, and then build hourly, shiftly, and daily KPIs along with aggregated totals based on the batch events.
Length - 14:13
Step 3: Creating Basic Reports and Dashboards
It's time to take the events and KPIs you've created and stored in the Flow database and put them on a series of reports and dashboards using the Flow Server.
Length - 32:53
The Final Product:
This report demonstrates you ability to measure both energy and water usage by hour, by shift, by day, and by batch.