The confidentiality of data is maintained in a case where analysis of an operation state of a facility is entrusted to the outside. Time difference information in operation between the manufacturing apparatuses (RB1), (RB2), . . . , arranged on the production line (LN) is stored for each of the apparatuses, in an inter-apparatus time difference information storage unit (33). At the occurrence of a failure in one of the manufacturing apparatuses (RB1), (RB2), . . . , the operation estimation unit (13) selects, from among the peripheral apparatuses on the upstream side and the downstream side with respect to the manufacturing apparatus concerned, one on the upstream side and one on the downstream side, estimates an operation period of each selected peripheral apparatus associated with the failure, reads log data corresponding to the estimated operation period from the operation history storage unit (31), and transmits the read piece to the external support center (SC).

A technique is desired that can output a warning to a user before a buffer of a controller runs out of a free space. A control apparatus includes a buffer for buffering log data sequentially generated, an interface unit connectable with an external storage device, a writing unit for sequentially reading the log data buffered to the buffer and sequentially writing the log data to the external storage device while the external storage device is connected to the interface unit, a monitoring unit for monitoring a free space of the buffer, and a warning unit for outputting a warning upon the free space falling below a prescribed value.

A control device performs logging of information related to communication with an instrument and logging of information related to control of the logging operation. The control device includes: a first connector that connects a first network to which a control target belongs; a second connector that connects a second network to which an external instrument belongs; a control arithmetic unit that executes control arithmetic processing using data related to the control target, a communication unit that exchanges the data with the external instrument by secure communication through the second network; a first logging unit that logs information related to the secure communication performed by the communication unit; and a second logging unit that logs information related to control of a logging operation of the first logging unit.

A method of operating an intelligent programmable logic controller over a plurality of scan cycles includes the intelligent programmable logic controller selecting one or more soft-sensors available in a control program corresponding to a production unit, each soft-sensor comprising a local parameter or variable used by the control program. The intelligent programmable logic controller determines updated soft-sensor values corresponding to the one or more soft-sensors during each scan cycle and stores those values during each scan cycle on a non-volatile computer-readable storage medium operably coupled to the intelligent programmable logic controller. Additionally, the intelligent programmable logic controller annotates the updated soft-sensor values with automation system context information to generate contextualized data.

A method is provided that provides data analysis for sequence of events reporting in the operation of an industrial process. A digital filter and edge detector are provided that combines a method for excluding known invalid samples and a method for excluding samples taken while the input in the traveling range. The filtering method reduces the overhead on the CPU from managing the sequence of events machine and allows it to focus on performing safety functions.

A method of compressing signal data in an intelligent programmable logic controller includes the controller creating a process image area in a volatile computer-readable storage medium operably coupled to the controller. The intelligent programmable logic controller updates the process image area with contents comprising signal data associated with a production unit and applies a compression algorithm to the contents to generate compressed signal data. The compressed signal data is stored on a non-volatile computer-readable storage medium operably coupled to the controller. The controller annotates the signal data with automation system context information to generate contextualized data. Next, the controller performs a statistical comparison of the signal data and the compressed signal data to generate statistical comparison results. Then, one or more compression parameters used by the compression algorithm may be automatically adjusted based on at least one of the statistical comparison and the contextualized data.

A programmable display device includes: an obtaining section for obtaining data; a setting accepting section for accepting, via a setting screen displayed in response to predetermined operation, a process setting for a content of a process to be executed for the data and information for executing the process; and a process executing section for executing the process in accordance with the process setting, the setting accepting section accepting the process setting in a state where the obtaining section is executing the obtaining of the data.

Production logs and industrial ontologies are processed with an inductive logic program performing class expression learning in order to create class expressions, with each class expression representing a constraint or property of a skill of a production module. The resulting class expressions are ordered by a metric to form an ordered recommender list and displayed to a user for postprocessing. The user selects suitable class expressions from the ordered recommender list, so that the system can build a machine-readable skill description with the selected class expressions. This approach to generating formal, machine-readable skill descriptions minimizes the labor time and domain expertise needed to equip production modules with their skill description. Selecting the correct class expression from the automatically generated ordered recommender list is a much lower effort than manual labeling from scratch.

A method of logging process data in a PLC controlled equipment is disclosed. Sections of a PLC application code comprise tasks configured to execute program functions at specific execution rates. Each of the tasks comprise program functions having dedicated memory areas assigned as tags, and each data entry of the process data comprises a tag value and an associated process value. The method comprises receiving process data from the PLC application code, assigning process values to threads of a thread pool, and receiving, for each of the threads, in a respective data table associated with each of the threads, the tag- and process values of the received process data, and determining a hash code for each of the tags according to a hash function of the respective data table for arranging the tag values and the associated process values in the respective data table according to said hash code.

A programmable display device includes: an obtaining section for obtaining data; a setting accepting section for accepting, via a setting screen displayed in response to predetermined operation, a process setting for a content of a process to be executed for the data and information for executing the process; and a process executing section for executing the process in accordance with the process setting, the setting accepting section accepting the process setting in a state where the obtaining section is executing the obtaining of the data.