Intelligent process monitoring and management

The established Intelligent Process Monitoring and Management (IPMM) research group has evolved a hybrid approach to machine and process condition monitoring. This paper briefly describes the transition, over the last 20 years, and change of emphasis from heavily 'sensor-based' monitoring methods to the current hybrid Petri net-based approach that is applicable to a wide variety of sequential control machine and process applications. Certain application examples are presented, these being selected to provide examples where the response of a machine or process controller can be utilised in a monitoring regime. This paper also provides an appreciation of the advantages and disadvantages of heavily sensor-based approaches and the use of digital controller signals along with a limited number of key analogue sensor signals. The use of the IPMM group's adapted version of Petri-nets is only briefly described. (5 pages)