Patent ID: 6876948
Filing Date: 2005-04-05
Classification: G05B,Y02P

Abstract:
1. A method to determine the capacity of a plant over a time window of interest, said time window having a time length P, said method comprising the steps of: (a) assembling said plant's historical production data over a selected time period; (b) creating the cycle entry data set of availability fractions for said time period, said cycle entry data set representing a plant operating time of length L; (c) calculating the capacity (C(i,1)) for each contiguous portion of length P of the cycle entry data set, where “i” is an index representing the number of contiguous P length portions of the cycle entry data set of length L; (d) shuffling the elements in the cycle entry data set; (e) calculating the capacities (C(i,j)),j=2, for each contiguous portion of length P of said shuffled cycle entry data set; (f) storing said calculated capacities C(i,2), j=2; (g) repeating steps (d)-(f) a sufficient number of times, incrementing the index j for each iteration; and (h) creating a histogram data set from said stored capacities C(i,j).