Patent ID: 7684887

Claim:
An Advanced Process Control method for acquiring, analyzing and monitoring production data in a production installation having one or more production sub-installations, the method comprising: determining and storing production sub-data comprising a plurality of sensor values, wherein each sensor value is associated with a machine, a machine component, a manufacturing recipe, a manufacturing parameter, or a combination thereof; grouping each sensor value of the plurality of sensor values into a sub-data group; calculating a characteristic value for the sub-data group from the sensor values of the sub-data group wherein the characteristic value comprises information about the magnitudes of the sensor values of the sub-data group; and using the characteristic value to analyze and monitor the production data; wherein the sub-data group represents a machine group, a machine component group, a manufacturing recipe group, a parameter group, or a combination thereof, and wherein: the machine group comprises a grouping of different machines of the production sub-installations that are similar according to a machine similarity criterion; the machine component group comprises a grouping of different machine components of the production sub-installations that are similar according to a machine component similarity criterion; the recipe group comprises a grouping of different manufacturing recipes that are similar according to a recipe similarity criterion; the parameter group comprises a grouping of different manufacturing parameters that are similar according to a parameter similarity criterion; and wherein a sensor value is grouped into a sub-data group if the sensor value is associated with the machine, machine component, manufacturing recipe, manufacturing parameter, or combination thereof that is represented by the sub-data group.