Measured outcomes

The events that never happened are the hardest ones to show.

So we show the two things that can be counted: the incidents a unit recorded before and after rtOpX, and what happened to the alarm load the operator was carrying.

50%

Reduction in DCS alarms

Client example, measured over the weeks following rtOpX installation.

70%

Of operating issues are human-performance related

Solomon Associates. The remaining 30% are mechanical.

5–20%

Of sensors are not performing as per design

Observed across Nexus client installations.

Incident avoidance

Small problems stay small

A Nexus client tracked incidents by severity class through the year before rtOpX and the year it ran. Every incident above the lowest severity class was avoided: class B and class C went to zero, and class D — the near-misses and minor deviations — fell from 122 to 37.

INCREASING SEVERITYABCDPrior yearWith Nexus rtOpX01512200037
Client incident record, prior year against the year rtOpX was running. Every incident above the lowest severity class was avoided, and the lowest class fell by roughly 70%.

The class D column is the one worth studying. Those are the events that were caught while they were still small — the ones that, left alone, become the classes above them.

Alarm load

Half the alarms, and the remaining half mean something

Alarm flooding is the standing complaint of every console operator we have worked with. rtOpX reduces it by removing causes — bad sensors, sticking valves, drifting equipment — rather than by loosening limits.

DCS ALARMS PER WEEKWEEKSrtOpX installed~50% fewer alarms
Alarm load falls because the causes are being fixed, not because limits were widened. Fewer nuisance alarms means the ones that remain are worth the operator’s attention.

The return

Three places the value shows up

01

Deployed Operations Excellence

  • Increased process availability
  • Increased operator effectiveness
  • Early detection and intervention of abnormal conditions
  • High-integrity data for plant-wide operational decisions
02

Intellectual Property Management

  • Digitization and deployment of best practices
  • Capture of man-years of operational experience
  • Transfer of best practices between units and sites
  • Enhanced and maintained operator competence
03

Reduced Maintenance & Support Effort

  • Reduced frequency of recurring maintenance activities
  • Reduced unscheduled maintenance occurrences and impact

Business case

What the plant manager gets

The operator-level improvements roll up. Fewer upsets means more on-spec product from the same asset, with less maintenance chasing failures that had already announced themselves.

Improve Profitability
Raise Plant Availability
Increase Operational Effectiveness
Prevent Damage to Costly Equipment
Reduce Down-Time
Greater Return on Capital Employed
Increase Throughput

These results were measured on systems no longer in service.

The record stands as it was recorded. For the sensor and controller diagnostics behind much of it, that work continues today at VALID8A.AI.

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