Factry Historian v7.0: Making process data analysis frictionless for non-technical users

The latest release of Factry Historian (v7.0) is a game-changer for industrial data analysis, providing unparalleled ease of configuration and usability improvements. Designed with accessibility in mind, this update ensures that anyone, regardless of technical expertise, can harness the full power of their process data. Ready to ramp up your data game? Your lucky number is (v)7.

A new milestone in process data analysis

The Factry Historian v7.0 release represents a major leap in usability for our industrial data platform, making data analysis more accessible, frictionless and intuitive than ever. It simplifies browsing and aggregating data from various sources, eliminates the need for manual SQL queries when investigating production data, and now offers the ability to add any type of metadata.

This update includes three core elements:

• Asset Prototyping: Save time with asset prototyping by standardising configurations across similar lines, machines, or assets.
• Grafana Data Source Plugin: Enhance data visualisation and trending in Grafana with new, user-friendly features.
• Custom Metadata: Add user-configurable metadata to any object, streamlining data management.

1. Save time with asset prototyping

Asset prototyping is a powerful new feature that allows users to build, update, and scale configurations more efficiently. By leveraging prototypes, users can standardise components, sensors, and data points across similar types of lines, machines, or assets. For example, if you have 15 production lines, you can create a template that includes all relevant sensors and data points, as well as calculations and batch processes. Once applied, these template configurations are automatically set up for each line, saving significant time and effort.

In a nutshell

Greatly enhancing the scalability of onboarding new assets, asset prototyping allows for quick updates and modifications, as any changes made to a template can be applied in bulk. Process engineers benefit from time savings and consistency checks, ensuring that assets match their templates accurately.

Additionally, while the prototyping system automates much of the configuration, it retains the flexibility for manual adjustments where necessary, accommodating any deviations from the standard prototype.

This balance of automation and flexibility provides users with a robust and user-friendly tool for managing their industrial data even more effectively.

2. Data source plugin for Grafana

The Factry Historian Data Source Plugin for Grafana brings significant usability improvements, making data analysis even more accessible and intuitive – without needing extensive training or coding knowledge. Especially designed and built to transform how people interact with and visualise industrial process data, the new plugin allows any role in any department to access and understand industrial process data quickly and easily.

Looking closer

While trending time-series data using Grafana is pretty straightforward, there have been significant usability gaps for non-experts. Especially users with prior experience in classic industrial historians may have missed features such as auto-loading Units of Measurement (UoM), scaling, auto high/low limits (HI/LO), and displaying event frames. The Factry Historian data source plugin brings these features to Grafana, enhancing data visualisation and trending.

One of the standout features is the ability to visualise events through graph panels, broadening perspectives beyond time series data. Users can overlay properties like temperature over events and trend them live, even if those properties were not initially stored. Additionally, the plugin supports variable queries for dashboard templating, enabling seamless switching between different assets and properties without having to create multiple dashboards.

Key features:

• Asset Structure: Browse historical production data using the asset tree, measurements or production events defined in Factry Historian.
• Event Overlaying: Easily overlay events on top of each other, or overlay events over time-series data.
• Auto UoM Loading: Automatically load Units of Measurement, saving time and reducing errors. 37 what? 37 kW!
• Scaling and Auto HI/LO: Automatically set y-axis scaling and high/low limits, making trends easier to interpret.
• Dashboard Variables: Make your dashboards templatable by configuring variables for Assets, Asset Properties, Events and more.

Read more about the Factry Historian data source plugin, including a practical example. For a detailed feature list, please visit our GitHub repository.

The Grafana Data Source Plugin connects to the Factry Historian REST API. Factry Historian and our API address the typical shortcomings of open source TSDBs, providing a robust solution for industrial data management.

Related story

The Factry Historian Grafana Data Source Plugin: Simplifying Industrial Data Visualisation.

3. Add custom metadata to objects

At the specific request of some of our clients, we have also implemented a smaller new feature: the ability to add custom metadata to any object. This especially comes in handy when setting up prototypes.

More specifically, this new feature allows for the addition of user-configurable metadata to measurements, assets, calculations, and collectors.

For instance, users can now easily manage serial numbers, location codes, KKS codes, engineering specifications and more.

Why this is helpful:

• Keep clear records of your assets in the field
• Use metadata fields as variables when instantiating assets based on prototypes
• Automatically link metadata to assets, properties and calculations

We believe that listening to our clients has always been a crucial factor in successfully developing our products. So we’re happy to meet this request, and make it available to all Factry Historian users!