Patent ID: 8882883

Claim:
Monitoring and analysis apparatus for use in a production plant, the apparatus comprising a computing processor operable to: receive operational data from one or more sensors operative to sense and communicate data representative of the operation of at least two production unit components utilized in the production process over a selected time interval; process the received operational data to transform the received operational data from a time domain to generated frequency domain data having harmonics; process the frequency domain data to calculate a value of an amplitude of each of at least one peak of the harmonics of the frequency domain data; identify the value of the amplitude of the peak of a significant harmonic of the frequency domain data for each of the at least two production unit components; apply a data normalization mathematical function to the identified amplitude values to calculate abnormalities in the identified amplitude values among two selected production unit components of the at least two production unit components as compared to data representative of normal operation amplitude values to generate processed production unit component monitoring data for the two selected production unit components; and store the generated processed production unit component monitoring data.