Patent ID: 7634384

Claim:
A method of reporting status information regarding an entity within a process plant comprising: receiving status information of a first type, wherein the first type of status information reflects a condition having a first temporal consequence; receiving status information of a second type, wherein the second type of status information reflects a condition having a second temporal consequence shorter than the first temporal consequence; receiving status information of a third type, wherein the third type of status information reflects a condition having a third temporal consequence shorter than the first temporal consequence; generating a report on a processor that includes the status information of the first, second and third types, wherein the report is indicative of the status of the entity; and displaying the report to a user, wherein the display of the report includes a polygonal representation indicative of the status of the entity, wherein the polygonal representation comprises three or more axes each pertaining to a different entity status category having a spectrum of values between a good status quality and a bad status quality and normalized relative to the other spectrums of values, each axis having a finite number of increments measured from a common origin relative to one end of the spectrum of values to an endpoint relative to the other end of the spectrum of values, wherein each endpoint is normalized to be equidistant from the origin as other endpoints of the other axes, wherein entity status values pertaining to each status category are proportionally assigned to a point on the respective axis and the point is linearly connected to a point of an entity status value of at least one other axis to define the polygonal representation intersecting the axes for a combined display of each of the plurality of categories, and wherein each type of status information pertains to a different one of the plurality of categories.