Simplifying asset management with prototypes in Factry Historian

Ever found yourself making the same changes in Factry Historian to multiple machines, line by line? Imagine the time saved if you could do it all at once.

With the introduction of asset prototypes in Factry Historian v7.0, we’ve made that a reality. Prototypes offer a way to standardize configurations across similar lines, machines, or assets, allowing you to define them once and apply them across your entire system with ease.

What are prototypes in Factry Historian?

In Factry Historian, prototypes serve as templates that standardise the configurations of similar assets. By defining prototypes once, you can quickly create and maintain assets within Factry Historian, saving time and reducing the risk of human errors.

Why is this relevant?

One of the most common requests was for a faster, easier way to manage a large number of assets consistently. For instance, making a small change across several machines could be time-consuming and error-prone depending on the amount of machines.

Prototypes were introduced to solve this exact problem, enabling efficient standardization across similar types of assets, making Factry Historian even more powerful and user-friendly, especially for large-scale operations.

Prototypes are a game-changer for various roles within a company.

• Factry Historian administrators setting up and maintaining systems can now standardize components, sensors, and data points with minimal effort.
• Users interacting with Factry Historian will appreciate the consistency and accuracy that prototypes bring, reducing the workload and minimizing the risk of errors.

How does it improve user experience?

This feature strikes the perfect balance between automation and flexibility. While prototypes allow for rapid, consistent deployment of configurations across multiple assets, they also retain the flexibility for manual adjustments when needed.

This gives users a powerful and user-friendly tool for managing industrial data more effectively, ensuring high standards of accuracy and efficiency without sacrificing control.

How prototypes work in Factry Historian

Prototyping in Factry Historian works by treating similar assets not as individual entities but as instances of a predefined template or prototype. The prototype you set up acts as a blueprint, defining the common properties, events, and configurations shared by similar assets.

When you create an instance from a prototype, it inherits all the predefined configurations, ensuring uniformity across the board. However, you can still customize instances individually or update the prototype to apply changes across all associated instances simultaneously.

For example, if you need to add a new measurement across multiple machines, updating the prototype will instantly propagate this change to all related assets. This approach simplifies the management of large-scale operations, making it easier to maintain consistency, reduce errors, and handle large volumes of data efficiently.

Getting started with prototypes in Factry Historian

To start using prototypes in Factry Historian, follow these simple steps:

1. Create an Asset Prototype: Name your prototype and choose a default time-series database.
2. Optionally add Metadata: Add relevant metadata to enhance your configurations, such as serial and type numbers, or an internal tag catalog from P&ID.
3. Define Asset Properties on the Asset Prototype: These properties can be linked to measurements (eg. Temperature, Pressure, RecipeStep) or calculations (eg. Efficiencies or Steam properties).
4. Define Events on the Asset Prototypes: Add Events, such as production batches, to the prototype. Inputs for these Events (triggers, and event properties) can now also come from Asset Properties of the prototype, in addition to measurements, calculations, external databases or manual entry.
5. Instantiate one or more Assets based on the Prototype: A wizard will help you attach the appropriate input measurements to your newly created Asset.
6. Manage Bulk Updates: Easily update multiple assets by modifying the prototype and bulk updating or pushing the changes to its instances. Or alternatively, pull the latest changes from the prototype onto each instantiated asset.

For a more detailed walkthrough, check out our video tutorial or request a demo to explore how prototypes can streamline your asset management.

Linking existing assets to prototypes

If you’ve already established an asset tree within Factry Historian, you can still benefit from the simplifications that prototypes offer. Linking existing assets to prototypes allows you to standardize configurations across all related assets, even those created before the introduction of this feature.

By linking an asset to a prototype, the asset adopts the prototype’s standardized configurations, ensuring consistency and ease of management. For example, if you need to update a specific parameter or add a new feature across multiple assets, linking them to a prototype will automatically apply these changes across all linked assets.

This method ensures all assets remain up-to-date with the latest configurations without the need for manual changes.

To link an existing asset to a prototype:

1. Access the asset in Factry Historian that you want to link.
2. Select the option to link the asset to the relevant prototype.
3. Confirm the link, allowing the asset to inherit the prototype’s configurations.

This feature ensures that your asset management process remains efficient and consistent, even as your operations evolve.

Challenges in developing prototypes

Creating the prototypes feature was not without its challenges, as balancing power with simplicity was key. We had to ensure the tool was intuitive for users while still offering the depth needed for complex configurations. This took several development iterations to get it just right.

Another challenge was making complexity manageable. With prototypes potentially involving numerous data points and configurations, we had to present this information in a way that was accessible and well-organized, without overwhelming the user. Through careful UI design and iterative feedback, we were able to create a tool that is both powerful and user-friendly.

Future improvements

While the prototypes feature is already a powerful tool, we’re always looking to make it even more powerful.

In future updates, we plan to introduce the ability to create prototypes directly from existing assets, further streamlining the process and making it even easier to standardize and manage your configurations.

Conclusion

With the release of prototypes in the v7.0 update for Factry Historian, we’ve brought a much requested functionality to the product. By introducing standardizing and automating configurations, our users now have access to a more simplified and efficient method of managing their industrial assets and data.

The work is far from done though, as we plan on further refining and developing this feature to make our software as user friendly and performant as possible.

As always, the evolving needs of those using our software remain our top priority. So if you have a specific question or want to propose a new feature to our development team, feel free to reach out to us here.