Distributed FactoryTalk Historian architecture

Data or process historians are software applications that log data from process equipment, manufacturing devices, and other main data sources that are important and relevant for the overall manufacturing process and for product quality. The FactoryTalk Historian collects time series data. It collects data points at given intervals whether or not the data points are changing. This allows customers to see how these data points are trending, and allows them to look at correlations of data points.

Because the FactoryTalk Historian continuously collects data, it allows customers to review past data, and view what occurred at a specific past point(s) in time. This means that if a specific event such as a downtime event, a bad batch, or an alarm occurs, an operator can look at any process variable in the FactoryTalk Historian for the same time frame as the event, and search for correlations that might explain the event. This allows the user to improve production and operational processes, eliminating the anomaly in the future.

The FactoryTalk Historian distributed architecture is multi-tiered. It redefines available options for manufacturers who want to maximize their ability to collect and analyze process data. It introduces a scalable, modular, synchronized methodology for collecting, maintaining, and analyzing process data at each level of manufacturing operations - machine or line, plant and enterprise (multi-plant). Specifically, FactoryTalk Historian ME:

The following diagram depicts the three levels of a distributed architecture.