Migration PI ProcessBook Displays to PI Vision
Customer Inquiry
The customer is using the OSIsoft PI System to store plant data already for many years. Throughout this time many ProcessBook displays have been developed in-house amongst others for production overviews and analysis of process data by process engineers. In light of the end-of-life notification of the PI ProcessBook client, the decision was made to migrate a part of these displays to PI Vision. This also presents the opportunity for a standard design along which these displays are being developed.
Magion already supported this customer with the maintenance and upkeep of its PI System. Therefore Magion was asked to propose a uniform standard for the setup of the PI Vision displays. Furthermore the customer requested for a number of PI ProcessBook displays showing overviews of particular parts of the production installation, to be migrated to PI Vision according to this standard.
More information?
Situation
OSIsoft, supplier of the PI Data Historian system, has indicated that the support of its PI ProcessBook client will cease in 2024. The PI ProcessBook client is part of the PI System and is used for the visualization of process data stored in the PI Data Archives. For this task OSIsoft has developed its PI Vision solution, which has been labeled the successor of PI ProcessBook. OSIsoft recommends to migrate existing PI ProcessBook displays to PI Vision.
Many industrial companies use PI ProcessBook displays for
visualization of production overviews and keep them at
hand at for instance team meetings of operations, maintenance, plant management, etc. It is also a very powerful tool used by process engineers to quickly trend and analyze certain process data stored within the PI System, or to figure out what happened in the plant during a particular moment. PI Vision uses different techniques than PI ProcessBook. It is therefore in many cases not possible to simply copy the PI ProcessBook display to PI Vision keeping all existing functionality intact. It is therefore recommended to migrate the displays with a philosophy and structured approach in mind.
Solution
In order to set up PI Vision displays in a structured and easily maintainable way, the choice was made to develop the displays using a PI-AF (Asset Framework) hierarchy. The structure for this hierarchy was designed using the S88 philosophy.
A general design was made for the setup of the displays themselves, in which standards were defined with respect to the symbols and colors to be used. This guarantees that all displays have the same look-and-feel. The most important displays containing the overviews of the production installation have been migrated to PI Vision using the agreed upon designs.
Project results
The most important PI ProcessBook overview displays have been migrated to PI Vision and are now daily being used in operational meetings.
The overview displays have been developed using the agreed upon standardization, which allows for quick and easy interpretation of the data by the users.
The setup created using display standards and PI-AF allows users to develop their own displays in PI Vision. Users are now able to migrate PI ProcessBook displays created in time by themselves to PI Vision.