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Tag indexes are crucial in TrendMiner since analytics are based on these indexes. Also, tag indexes are used as a sort of cache to chart data which reduces the stress on the historian/data source. For these and other reasons it’s important to have well performing indexing on your TrendMiner installation. There are 2 very simple and easy accessible indicators which can give an idea about the health of your indexing:Index manager: in an ideal case all indexed tags should be updated at least once an hour. To check if that is the case you can open the index manager, sort by ‘last updated date’ and verify that the oldest updates are no longer than 1 hour ago.    Check the data source metrics in ConfigHub: if the metrics are bad it could be worth checking for optimizations. There are no strict limits between good and bad performance and other factors like the number of data sources and indexed tags all play a role in the general performance, but in general index operations metrics should no

Hello ✌🏻Here is the Arthur Fernandes' (@arthurfornari) engaging presentation at TrendLab 2024 Americas. Nouryon utilized DashHub to identify process inefficiencies and reduce waste, applying Lean Six Sigma principles. TrendMiner enabled faster data analysis through pre-set dashboards, allowing for more efficient decision making. By using data driven insights, they were able to pinpoint opportunities for improvement, optimize monitoring, and engage with process stakeholders for effective follow-up and validation of solutions.Additionally, they highlight the initial use of MLHub and outline plans to leverage machine learning algorithms further in the future. Arthur’s presentation was not just informative but also showcased practical applications and success stories, leaving attendees inspired to implement these strategies within their own organizations. 💡 Did Arthur’s insights resonate with you? We would love to hear your thoughts. Sharing your experiences can inspire and benefit the e

When creating context items via search results, it is often useful to map calculations on your search results to a context field for that context item. Once the calculation is mapped to the context item, the calculation can be displayed as a table column in your context view. This feature can come in handy when you want to display metrics or to report KPIs. We will explore a batch example where we leverage this feature. Consider a batch process where a variety of product grades are manufactured. For a specific product grade, for example product ALPHA, we would like to know the total feed throughput as well as the max quality during the batch. For this demonstration, we will be using the TM-BP2-PRODUCT.1, TM-BP2-QUAL.1, and TM-BP2-CW.1 tags.TrendHub view with PRODUCT, QUALITY, and FLOW tags. 1. Create context items via value-based searchTo begin, start a new value-based search to identify periods when product ALPHA is produced.Create a value-based search for ALPHA batches. 2. Add calcul

You may have experienced that when working with stepped tags in formulas, your output is not quite what you were expecting. As an easy example, let's look at a batch process where we have a a discrete tag with the quality (top), and a digital tag with the product name (middle). Suppose now we want to create a tag that only shows the quality when the product is Alpha, you might think to implement it as in the screenshot below. However, as you can see, the result (bottom tag) is not quite what you would be expecting:  So why we do we get this sawtooth pattern? The first thing to understand is that our resulting formula tag only gets calculated where one of our input tags has a datapoint. Where there is a datapoint for any of the input tags, values for the other input tags are obtained through interpolation. The second factor that gives us this result in that formula tags are always of the analog type, meaning the interpolation is linear. Since our underlying discrete tags are sparse (the

TrendMiner automatically syncs with your LDAP/Active Directory (AD) provider at regular intervals defined in the LDAP sync settings. For example, if the sync interval is set to 1 day, any new LDAP users or groups added to your Active Directory may take up to 24 hours to appear in TrendMiner’s user or group list.In some situations, this delay may not be ideal. Fortunately, TrendMiner allows you to trigger a manual sync of an LDAP provider to expedite the process. Steps to Manually Sync an LDAP/AD Provider  1. Log in to the ConfigHub Portal:  Access the administrative portal for TrendMiner.  2. Navigate to Identity Providers:  Under the SECURITY section, locate the Identity Providers list.  3. Select the LDAP Provider:  Click on the LDAP provider for which you want to trigger a manual sync.  4. Initiate the Manual Sync:  In the LDAP Details panel, click the Options drop down menu, then select Sync Provider.  5. Verify the Results:  Once the sync is complete, the newly added users or grou

Hello 👋🏻Operational efficiency is crucial for maintaining productivity and reducing costs in any manufacturing process. LyondellBasell faced significant operational challenges, resulting in production losses and high maintenance costs. Their previous campaigns were inconsistent, with varying operational issues making it impossible to directly compare past datasets. To address these issues and prepare for future campaigns, they needed a reliable baseline.Fortunately, TrendMiner's MLHub was instrumental in addressing these issues. How TrendMiner helped?Analyzing past campaigns Identifying process variables that impact reactor performance Building regression models to identify performance independent of unit operational mode/regimeAdditionally, it has been key in helping to generate comprehensive reports, streamlining data-driven insights for improved decision-making.👉 For more information, watch the recording of the presentation by Sean Heffernan (​@smheffer) and Joe Zimny at TrendLab

Implementing a new platform comes with its share of challenges, especially when ensuring consistent adoption among users. Whether you're a key user or the project manager driving the implementation, here are five strategies to help you tackle adoption challenges effectively.Motivation: Intrinsic and Extrinsic RewardsIndividuals are motivated by different means - intrinsic (a sense of purpose or mastery) or extrinsic (recognition or incentives). Understanding the motivators for your team will drive better engagement. Frame adoption as an opportunity for team members to enhance their skills and contribute to organizational goals.Integrate Training into DevelopmentAdoption isn’t just about familiarity—it’s about mastery. Incorporate TrendMiner into your team’s training curriculum and ongoing professional development. Ensure training is role-specific and hands-on. I once came across a quote by Ben Franklin that reads, "Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn."

Encouraging TrendMiner users to present successful use cases not only highlights the value of data-driven insights but also motivates employees to maximize their skills. By offering an incentive for the best use case, showcased in a meeting with other colleagues, the company can drive collaboration and efficiency improvements across teams. Benefits for the CompanyEnhanced Motivation: Incentives encourage employees to explore new solutions and share impactful results, increasing their engagement and creativity with TrendMiner. Knowledge Sharing: Presenting top use cases enables others to learn from proven solutions, creating a culture of shared learning and best practices. Company-wide Efficiency: Replicating successful solutions across departments accelerates process improvements and increases overall productivity. Possible Incentives for EmployeesThe most impactful use case each year could be awarded the TrendMiner of the Year title, along with the TrendMiner Award as recognition for

Here is the recording of Marc Pijpers &Sebbe Lecocq (​@Sebbe) at TrendLab 2024 Europe, where they shared how Sitech used TrendMiner to optimize production, avoid quality losses, and proactively resolve issues.Sitech faced reduced production speed and quality issues when switching from product A to B. Using TrendMiner, they quickly identified off-spec periods, calculated the feed/production speed ratio, and analyzed the ideal operating curve with xy diagrams. New conditions were set based on this analysis, avoiding €0.5M in quality losses, decreased downtime because of good preparation. For an in-depth understanding of Sitech's application of TrendMiner and the results achieved, watch their presentation at TrendLab 2024 Europe: 

Implementing and evaluating new data tools often involves two main phases: Implementation and User Adoption. While the technical aspects of implementation are crucial, the success of a new tool ultimately depends on user adoption.Many organisations struggle with the second phase, user adoption and change management. We have already shared plenty of advices regarding adoption and change management, but from our experience, one crucial factor for a successful TrendMiner adoption is the creation of an internal SharePoint to track all actions, projects, sessions, and reports.Our most successful customers have found immense value in creating a centralised repository for TrendMiner use cases and investigations. This empowers both new and experienced users to learn from each other, multiplying the benefits of TrendMiner across your organisation.An internal SharePoint can act as a valuable toolkit for your team. Whether you're a new user seeking training, an intermediate user searching for use

Have you ever noticed how we’re more likely to jump on board with something when we see others doing the same? That’s the Bandwagon Effect in action—a powerful psychological phenomenon where people adopt behaviors, trends, or tools simply because others are doing it. Like everything in life, this has both positive and negative effects, but either way, it’s a proven behavioral insight that we can harness to make your TrendMiner rollout a success. 🚀 What is the Bandwagon Effect?The Bandwagon Effect happens when people feel motivated to join a trend or adopt a behavior because they see their peers doing so. In a workplace setting, this means employees are more likely to engage with new software if they see colleagues embracing it, achieving success, or simply talking about it positively. 💡 Using the Bandwagon Effect for TrendMinerHere’s how you can use this effect to ensure a smooth rollout of TrendMiner:Highlight Success Stories: Share examples of teams or individuals who have already

If you’ve added a new tag to an existing data source, but it’s not showing up in TrendMiner, it’s likely because the automated connector sync only happens every 24 hours.Why Tags May Not Appear ImmediatelyTrendMiner refreshes the data source tag cache every 24h from the moment the data source was added, the connector was last manually synced, or the tm-datasource service was restarted. This means that updates to the list of available tags and their metadata (name, description, units and tag type) can take up to a day to take hold organically.Need the tag right away?You can manually refresh the tag cache to make the new tag available immediately:Navigate to ConfigHub > Data Sources. Select the data source where the new tag was added. Click Refresh Tag Cache to pull in the latest tags.Alternatively, you can also sync the connector to ensure the data source is fully synchronized with TrendMiner.This way, your new tag will be available without waiting for the next scheduled sync.

 In the chemical industry, monitoring specific events that occur within a defined time frame - such as under X minutes - is crucial for ensuring safety, maintaining product quality, and optimizing processes. While such short-duration events might be fleeting, their impact can be significant, and timely detection is essential to prevent disruptions or inefficiencies. In this article, I will demonstrate how to monitor short-duration events in TrendMiner effectively, enabling proactive responses to these critical occurrences.Why monitor short-duration events?Short-duration events can provide key insights into process dynamics, equipment performance, and potential risks. By monitoring and addressing these brief occurrences, you can enhance operations and safeguard compliance. Here are some practical examples:Environmental compliance and safety: Detecting leaks or abnormal emissions that last less than X minutes is essential for mitigating environmental risks and ensuring safety protocols a

Increase TrendMiner usage and improve user skills by applying a skills matrix that provides key users with a structured path for skills development, providing a clear roadmap to progress from someone who is not aware to beginner, advanced, expert and finally to TrendMiner Coach level. Embark on the journey and reach the summit to become a TrendMiner coach! Follow these three steps to get started and benefit from the TrendMiner Skill Matrix yourself by improving your Skill Level:  Take our TrendMiner Quiz and see how many points you have scored.   Download the TrendMiner Skill Matrix, open the Excel sheet "Key User questionnaire", evaluate your skill level based on the points you have achieved in the quiz and the definitions of the Key Value Streams (General, Monitoring, Reporting, Dashboarding & Troubleshooting) given for each skill level (Not aware, Beginner, Advanced, Expert, Coach).  Refer to the second sheet of the Excel file "Trainingsmaterial per Key Value" for relevant t

Hi everyone,Here is the recording of Clariant’s TrendLab presentation. In this session, David Judersleben (Assistant Plant Manager) ​@DavidJudersleben presents an use case on Clariant's energy management system, highlighting how it efficiently optimizes energy usage, reduces CO2 emissions, and lowers operational costs.About Clariant's Energy Management System:The Knapsack site of Clariant in Germany, a producer of flame retardants for construction and coatings, uses TrendMiner for continuous improvement in energy monitoring.Key Benefits of Using TrendMiner:Identifying energy waste, generating project ideas for improvement Substituting traditional lab analyses with real-time process monitoring Enhanced predictive maintenance Effective management of energy top-load Comprehensive project visualization Alarm raising and deviation tracking to preclude penalties due to excessive energy consumptionOne of the most significant achievements realized through this system is the optimization of hea

Hi everyone,Here is the recording of the recent TrendMiner 2024.R3.0 release webinar. This webinar includes new functionalities like;Scatter Plots to Event Analytics, Dashboard Configuration Improvements,  Tag Dependencies in The Active Tags list, Plug 'n Play connectivity to Canary HistorianWatch the full recording to learn how these updates can benefit your operations and help you achieve your goals more effectively.You can find the slides here.Watch the webinar recording below:If you have any questions or feedback about the new release, feel free to share them in the comments below. 

BackgroundIn batch processes, tracking key metrics like batch start and end times, cycle durations, and critical values such as maximum temperature can provide valuable insights. For instance, maintaining temperature within a certain threshold during a batch step can prevent quality issues and ensure process safety. This use case will guide you through how to document, track, and analyze batch cycle times, utilizing TrendMiner’s TrendHub and ContextHub features to streamline and automate this process.ChallengeTraditionally, batch cycle times have been recorded manually in Excel spreadsheets by board operators. This manual entry system often results in inconsistencies, especially when operators miss recording the start or end times of batches. TrendMiner provides a more reliable solution by automatically identifying and documenting batch steps and storing this information alongside tag data. By automating these records, TrendMiner reduces the reliance on Excel and increases accuracy.Sol

In process manufacturing, especially in chemical engineering, collaboration between Operational Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT) teams is essential when implementing software like TrendMiner. For the software to work well, data from physical processes needs to be integrated with analytical tools. This requires good coordination between the OT and IT teams. Here are three key concepts that can help make your work with the IT team more effective.Data Integration and AccessibilityTo make software like TrendMiner work effectively, the data from physical processes needs to be easily accessible. The OT team collects real-time data from sensors and control systems, while the IT team ensures this data is available for analysis by providing the right infrastructure and secure connections.CybersecurityWhen OT systems (which often use older technology) are connected to IT systems, cybersecurity becomes crucial. IT teams focus on protecting systems from cyber threats, while OT needs

When creating a ticket for the TrendMiner support team it is useful to include detailed information about the issue. This will ensure that the issue can be investigated and fixed in shortest amount of time possible.Creating a detailed ticket will prevent a lot of back and forth communication and will increase the chance of a quick resolution.Steps on the creation of a detailed support ticket:Write a clear and concise title that describes the issue with a few words.Useful information to include in the ticket description:A detailed and clear explanation of the issue. Screenshots or videos provide additional clarity. Upload the appliance logs. This can be requested from your administrator if you do not have the required permissions: https://documentation.trendminer.com/en/how-to-extract-appliance-logs-.html If there are multiple TrendMiner installations within your organization. please specify which installation you are experiencing the issue on. Which version of TrendMiner are you using?

TrendMiner offers three main methods for calculating and tracking consumption or production over time, depending on your goals. You can use the Statistics Table, Calculations on Search Results, or set up a Consumption/Production Tag for continuous reporting. 1. Using the Statistics TableCalculating consumption or production for a given period is a simple one-step process, assuming there is already a tag representing the flow, rate, ... that is to be quantified. If this is not the case, such a tag can be created as a rate or through a formula. Once such a tag is in place you can navigate to the relevant period and open the statistics table. Here all the corresponding values can be read immediately. Often the total amount for the selected period is of interest, which can be read from the integral value, although the average value could also be interesting.Note: TrendMiner does not interpret the units of your tag. The integral value calculation always assumes your rate is expressed in 'pe

Hi everyone,We're excited to share a recording from the recent TrendLab Europe event (TrendMiner Community event), where Yusuf Hamurcu from ICIG provided an insightful presentation on how they leverage TrendMiner for troubleshooting, monitoring, reporting, and daily dashboard operations.Using TrendMiner brings ICIG the following value:Enhanced Process Insights: ICIG uses TrendMiner to gain real-time visual warnings, quickly identifying any out-of-spec products or batches. Improved Quality Control: Since adopting TrendMiner's soft sensor, ICIG has eliminated out-of-spec batches in their lengthy distillation process (5-15 days). Reduced Raw Material Consumption: In 2023, a valve leak was detected that resulted in a raw material loss of approximately $350,000, but it was detected and troubleshooted it so that it can be avoided now and in the future. Optimized Operations: TrendMiner's performance tags and daily dashboards support better decision-making on shutdowns, maintaining high standa

BackgroundThis use case shows how to create a custom visualization / chart that can be displayed on your DashHub dashboard as a tile. We can do this via MLHub. In this use case example, we will create a bar chart to track a key process metric at a facility, monthly average energy usage. Once we have added this visualization as a tile to the target dashboard, we can add other visualizations, as needed, following a similar procedure. These dashboards can then be shared with your peers. SolutionThe solution includes the following steps:Create a TrendHub view: Create a TrendHub view with all of the relevant tags. Adjust the time period on your focus chart. You will want to include all of the data that will be used to create your visualization. Save this TrendHub view.                                                                          TrendHub view with focus chart duration spanning the entire year of 2024.  Create a new MLHub notebook: Navigate to MLHub and create a new notebook. In

To ensure security, TrendMiner allows the installation and running of virus scanners next to the TrendMiner application, only on single node deployments and with certain conditions. While antivirus software is an important security measure, it is crucial to note that TrendMiner's performance is closely tied to I/O performance as the application builds a time series index using many small local files, grouped into time-based structures. Virus scanners, particularly those that scan all disk I/O, may still cause performance degradation or failures in some cases.  Important Considerations:Performance Impact: Antivirus processes that scan disk I/O can introduce delays, potentially affecting TrendMiner’s responsiveness. In extreme cases, it may cause system failures, such as:User experience degradation due to slower I/O performance and CPU/Memory spikes caused by the antivirus software. Delays in monitoring events, due to slower indexing, related to slower I/O performance  TrendMiner upgrade