Patent ID: 9507336
Filing Date: 2016-11-29
CPC Classification: G05B

Claim Text:
1. A method comprising: identifying a plurality of connections to a field device in a process control system as logic points; identifying, for each logic point, one or more elements that use a process value from the field device; identifying an aggregate control connection status of the field device by (i) determining whether at least one of the one or more elements of each logic point is able to use a manual value in place of the process value, (ii) determining whether at least one other of the one or more elements of each logic point is able to use a user configured value, and (iii) evaluating a logic expression based on results of the determining in (i) and (ii), the logic expression comprising a logical “AND” of the results of the determining in (i) and (ii) for each logic point; determining whether the field device is available to be taken offline based on the aggregate control connection status; and generating a notification based on the determination of whether the field device is available to be taken offline.