Abstract: A process plant data collection and viewing system uses a common or integrated navigational tree structure and one or more common display formats to enable a user to view, in a similar and consistent manner, information obtained from different applications or data sources within a process plant at any desired level of integration, even though the actual data from the multiple different data applications or data sources may be collected and organized in different manners by different data sources. Because a common visualization of information is provided at different levels of data integration, a user can easily navigate through the data stored in the database or collected by the different data sources at higher or lower levels of data integration without having to contend with or encounter multiple different viewing formats for the same type of data.

Abstract: A maintenance system for a process plant collects and uses historical data about maintenance orders. The data identifies the maintenance items for completing an order, such as the labor, materials, and maintenance tasks required. The data is historical data developed from actual completed maintenance orders. The system uses archived historical data and estimates various maintenance information, such as estimated cost for completing the maintenance order, and estimated start and completion times. The estimated data may be based on averaged data as a result. This estimated data along with the other maintenance order information may be sent to a scheduler for identifying a priority to the maintenance order and scheduling it accordingly.

Abstract: A process control system uses an asset optimization reporter to collect status information pertaining to the assets of a process plant from various data sources of the plant including, for example, data tools, data collectors, and data generators. This status information is used to generate reports that may be displayed to various users, including maintenance persons, process control persons and business persons. The status information may be used as the basis for further types of status information and/or be categorized in ways that are useful to the user. The reports are generally displayed via a user interface routine that enables users to view the status information and manipulate the display of the report to correspond to the user's preferences, as contained in a user profile. The user interface routine further enables the user to view reports of various types of status information for various devices, loops, units, areas, etc.

Abstract: A process plant data collection and organization system uses a common or integrated navigational tree structure to organize and enable a user to view and access information obtained from different applications or data sources within a process plant, even when those different applications have different manners of organizing or enabling users thereof to view the collected information. The integrated navigational tree may be developed from and may use the navigational tree categories of the different applications or may map the data within different categories of the navigational trees of the different applications into categories within the integrated navigational tree. The integrated navigational tree enables a user to view and access plant data collected or developed by different applications within the process plant in a single place and in an organized manner so that the user can view data related to the plant from a higher point of view than provided by any of the individual applications.

Abstract: A process plant data collection and viewing system uses a common or integrated navigational tree structure and one or more common display formats to enable a user to view, in a similar and consistent manner, information obtained from different applications or data sources within a process plant at any desired level of integration, even though the actual data from the multiple different data applications or data sources may be collected and organized in different manners by different data sources. Because a common visualization of information is provided at different levels of data integration, a user can easily navigate through the data stored in the database or collected by the different data sources at higher or lower levels of data integration without having to contend with or encounter multiple different viewing formats for the same type of data.

Abstract: An originating application in a process plant is able to launch multiple desired applications, with one or more of the desired applications having a different application programming interface. In one example, the originating application is able to launch multiple desired applications via an application launcher program. The originating application provides the application launcher program with an indication of the desired application to be launched, and the application launcher program then launches the indicated desired application.