Patent ID: 8843221

Claim:
A method for monitoring performance of equipment located in an automation environment, comprising: identifying a cycle associated with the equipment, the cycle defined by a sequence of a plurality of tasks; collecting, over a plurality of repetitions of the sequence, a series of signals for each of the plurality of tasks in the cycle from a controller configured to control the equipment; associating, for each of at least some of the plurality of repetitions, one or more signals in the series to define a completion time for each of the plurality of tasks; comparing, for each of the plurality of tasks, each of the completion times to a reference value indicative of an expected completion time of a given task; generating, using a processor and for each of the plurality of tasks, an accumulated variance value based on the comparisons; selectively generating a predictive failure indication based on the generated accumulated variance values; and if a predictive failure indication is generated, identifying which of the plurality of tasks in the cycle resulted in the predictive failure indication.