Patent ID: 8065112

Claim:
A method implementable on a computer system for assessing exceedance of safe operating limits of a process, the process having equipment and having an instrument for measuring a process variable of said equipment, the computer system having access to equipment data for the process, instrument data for the equipment, and a process history database storing the process variable measured by the instrument, the method comprising: (a) electronically importing equipment data for the process and instrument data for the equipment into a database for exceedance monitoring, wherein the instrument data comprises safe operating limits of the process; (b) for a selected piece of equipment in the process having an associated instrument for measuring the process variable, completing a reporting record with information from the exceedance monitoring database, wherein the reporting record includes a defined instrument tag and defined limits including an exceedance limit value associated with safe operating limits for the process; (c) electronically searching the process history database, based on the defined instrument tag and defined limits in the reporting record, for data values of the process variable measured by the instrument which exceed the exceedance limit value; (d) electronically importing the data values from the process history database into the exceedance monitoring database as discrete exceedance values representing apparent exceedances; (e) displaying as part of the reporting record one or more exceedance records each representing apparent exceedances for an interval of time representing the duration of the apparent exceedance for evaluation by a user; and (f) electronically recording based on input from the user whether the apparent exceedance is valid or invalid.