Seeq Enables Engineers to Pursue Ideas and Hypotheses at Their Speed of Thought
We are wrapping up the fall tour of automation vendor user conferences and it’s been a blur. Yokogawa in Orlando, OSIsoft in Munich, Wonderware in Orlando, Emerson Exchange in Austin, Inductive Automation in Folsom, and Honeywell in The Hague. Plus regional conferences with OSIsoft and several other events in the pharmaceutical industry. Many places, many vendors, but one consistent reaction best expressed by one of the process engineers we met:
“Where have you been all my life?”
Seeq Analytics Engineers Brian Crandall and Shamus Cunningham with Sales Executive Teresa Dixon
at Emerson Exchange 2016
Which is good to hear, certainly, the feedback that Seeq is addressing a long-standing need among the process engineer audience. And we hear this feedback regardless of the historian, vertical industry – from oil & gas to phama to food & beverage – or title of the process engineers. Ok, once or twice we heard the same sentiment a different way, such as “this brings tears to my eyes,” so there was some variation on how we heard it.
So how do we attribute this reaction, what is it about Seeq that creates such an obvious sense of value in our demonstrations and customer reactions? Three things:
First, engineers quickly recognize Seeq for what it is: a solution for them. Seeq meets their needs, needs that have been recognized and reinforced every time process engineers go backwards in time (to a spreadsheet) to deal with the modern issues of increased data volumes, data silos, and pressure to rapidly find insights that improve production outcomes. There are different words for the engineering audience focus of Seeq, including “self service” and “self directed.” But they all reflect that Seeq is an application that accelerates their efforts. And this is true regardless of the hundreds of different titles that “process engineers” go by. Whatever their title, whatever their industry, whatever their expression, Seeq is the application experience engineers have been waiting for to aggregate, investigate, and publish insights on production data sets.
Second, it’s about the data. “Un-impinged access to data of any source” is another quote from an event this fall. So of course Seeq supports the leading historian offerings, such as the OSIsoft PI System, Honeywell PHD, Wonderware Historian, Emerson Delta V, and Aspentech IP21, among others. And it goes beyond historian data sets with support for quick and easy connections to the “data silos” or “stranded data” that is critical for analytics and littered around the plant environment. This could include data in SQL Server, MySQL, and Excel via CSV files. Or data from any OPC data source. Or MES or Batch system records. Typically connecting to, aggregating, cleansing and modeling data from multiple sources is the lion’s share of the time required to complete an analytics project. “80% of the work is just getting the data assembled and ready to work,” is a typical sentiment. But in Seeq, the connection and aggregating of data is a feature of the overall application experience, which means productivity in every stage of the effort.
Finally, it’s how Seeq enables engineers to pursue ideas and hypotheses at their speed of thought. Seeq is designed for investigations and has features and flexibility to accelerates insights with an agile approach to problem solving. If something doesn’t work, try something else: add more data, choose a different dimension, or compare results to a different sensor. And Seeq has both the ease of use features – visual, interactive – and the technical depth with formulas and a REST API that enable it to be used across an incredible range of inquires. And ad hoc research effort or a monthly summary. Either working alone or working with colleagues in real time. With the data in one place or many. Running Seeq on premises or in the cloud. Whatever your query or working model, the rapid, interactive, agile experience provided by Seeq fits the customer needs.
We had a great fall and wish everyone a healthy and happy holiday season, and we’ll look forward to seeing you in the New Year. ARC Industry Forum in Orlando, Florida in February is the first show on our list for 2017.