Using tools that promote self-service analytics can help process experts reduce downtime by finding the root cause of a process anomaly quickly. Process experts also can gain insight into the performance and reliability of assets to schedule timely maintenance, thus prolonging asset health and life.

Industrial processing facilities face an interesting balancing act. On one hand, they face the challenge of ensuring safety, quality, profit, environmental compliance and product reliability.

Measuring temperature across a process unit — for example, a furnace, desalter, hydrofiner, fixed-bed reactor or hydrocracker in refineries or similar process units in chemical plants — leads to improved process control, increased catalyst life, more efficient production, fewer process upsets and decreased emissions.

When it comes to the industrial furnaces, heaters and boilers used in the chemical, petrochemical and utility industries, the actual operational designs are as varied as the many applications. Some plants have only two or three heaters while larger plants may have more than 50.