Industries

Canary Labs is involved in a variety of different work industries not only in the United States but also throughout the world. Here are some of the different industries we are involved in:

Chemical & Polymers

Chemical and Polymer companies require safe, efficient and reliable methods of storing data and communicating between local and global facilities. Canary Labs has worked with many companies to deliver an infrastructure that includes real-time and historical information used to track equipment, monitor energy and water usage, optimize equipment efficiencies and manage maintenance schedules.

Looking for a better method to store historical data and provide trend information for the PLCs and other less flexible and obsolete software used in the facility, Xerox started using the Canary Enterprise Historian and TrendLink software in November, 2007. The engineering and maintenance staff can troubleshoot and apply preventive maintenance methods by extensively monitoring water production and wastewater processing. Additional facility equipment, including chillers and boilers, will have historical data archived to further monitor and optimize operations.


Discrete and Process Manufacturing

Discrete and process manufacturing companies face many challenges. Some of these include regulatory compliance, optimizing production, and increasing plant efficiencies all while sharing information across multiple locations. Canary Labs works closely with manufacturers to implement a solution that will provide great benefits to daily operations while minimizing costs.

Mountain Cement Company turned to Canary Labs to implement a solution that could work across multiple locations. Initially, the Canary Enterprise Historian and TrendLink software was used to aid with the production operations processes. After further evaluation, Mountain Cement Company engaged Canary Labs to deliver further functionality that would provide real-time values and trends of the instantaneous and averaged data to operations personnel, and to alert operators to excess emission events while simultaneously recording the cause and corrective actions in the Canary Enterprise Historian. Using the Canary Excel Add-In, Mountain Cement can provide on-demand reports that detail excess emissions, kiln operating time, calculated percentage of time in excess, and other required regulatory events. In addition to increased productivity, Mountain Cement ensures a safe work environment for their employees.


Food, Beverage & Consumer Goods

Canary Labs has worked with many food, beverage and consumer goods companies to store historical data and create trends to monitor production, assist with predictive maintenance, create food safety and sanitation reports to meet federal reporting/regulatory requirements, and to lessen the dependence on water and electric utilities.

A chocolate manufacturing company implemented a solution that integrates the TrendLink and LogBook applications with the Parker Hanefin Corporation Interact (formerly owned by CTC) user interface and OPC server. TrendLink is an embedded control within the Interact Human Machine Interface (HMI) and is used to view trends of several unique system processes.

Manufacturing chocolate requires a drying process that monitors the various oven temperatures called Critical Control Points (CCP). Using TrendLink to trend various CCP data, operations staff can monitor and determine that ovens remain within an appropriate temperature zone. If the process varies outside this zone, then action is required to divert the product off the production line until the temperatures are stabilized.
The other processes and operations monitored include pressures, vacuum, uptime, dry material, time that the vessel is charged, and time started. Operator’s interactions are stored using the LogBook application. Based on this and other collected data, management can see if staff operated the proper functions in a timely manner. The LogBook application has proven to be a tremendous help in keeping the operators successful.


Government

Government projects require safe, reliable and cost effective solutions. Contractors need to offer a broad range of products to address the unique requirements of these projects. The Canary Labs product suite extends data management from collection to analysis and reporting and can be used to provide better decision making, reduce downtime, optimize operations, facilitate preventative maintenance, and analyze process failures to improve and increase the agility, efficiency and reliability of operations.

Bechtel Machine Propulsion Corporation and Knolls Atomic Power Laboratory utilize the Canary Enterprise Historian and TrendLink software in their world-class research and development facilities in support of the United States Naval Nuclear Propulsion Program. In their laboratories, technical staff view critical information used to develop and test nuclear propulsion technologies. Additionally, the software provides technical support for the safe and reliable operation of existing naval reactors and those who operate the equipment.


Metals & Minerals

In fluctuating economic times, metal and mining companies are faced with many challenges to operate efficiently and profitably. Aside from increased or decreased supply and demand, these companies are required to supply a high quality product while emphasizing employee safety and environmental sustainability, and ultimately meeting all federal and state regulatory requirements. Real-time historian and trending data can provide crucial information used to troubleshoot problems, improve productivity and product quality, and streamline the documentation and reporting process.

Canary Labs began working with Gallatin Steel in 1997 to address specific needs in one area of the plant. Today, there are four (4) installations of the Canary Enterprise Historian and TrendLink software. Extensively used throughout the plant, TrendLink is utilized by control room operators to monitor and control their processes, by the engineer staff to trouble shoot and improve production efficiencies, and by management to analyze and direct operations. Through the improved visibility, Gallatin Steel estimates that the Canary Labs Enterprise Product Suite saves the company approximately $1 million annually in avoided downtime costs.


Oil, Gas, Refining, & Pipelines

Change is a constant for the oil and gas industry. Fluctuations in daily prices, increases/decreases in demand, international relations, and economic pressures all influence energy consumption and the resource mix for the energy industry. Each supplier faces internal pressures to perform better and decrease costs while increasing revenues for owners. Canary Labs delivers many options to oil, gas, refining and pipeline companies that can help reduce production and exploration costs, improve process and production metrics, centralize information, and provide streamlined reporting for regulatory compliance.

Kinder Morgan, the largest midstream and fourth largest energy company in North America, works with Canary Labs to streamline, consolidate and centralize production information.Canary Labs deployed the Canary Enterprise Historian and TrendLink software to synchronize data from 54 historians and allow Kinder Morgan to have complete control of the transfer speed to ensure no impact to on-going operations. Canary Labs worked with the end users to configure simple views consisting of site and pipeline location drop-down lists, primary or back-up servers or datasets, date and time to display, time duration for charts, and chart sizes. The project resulted in Kinder Morgan having a centralized historian solution that is easy-to-use, maintain, network friendly and reliable. Kinder Morgan uses the system for regulatory inspections, has reduced investments in network infrastructure and hardware, and has reduced the need for remote resources to manage pumping locations.


Power Generation & Electric Utilities

Today, the power generation and electric utility industry is experiencing great change. Renewable energy, inclement weather and increased storm damage, gas emissions, lack of transmission capacity, economic and environmental regulations, and the Smart Grid are all influencing daily operations. The Canary Labs product suite offers solutions that optimize production, maximize performance, streamline regulatory related compliance issues, and enable the Smart Grid and related equipment and solutions.

Cordova Electric Cooperative uses the Canary Enterprise Historian and TrendLink software to monitor critical hydroelectric equipment. Located in a remote area of Alaska, Cordova Electric Cooperative produces 60% of the electric power from the Power Creek Hydroelectric Project, a Green-E certified, low impact, run-of-the-river hydroelectric project. In addition to using the Canary Enterprise Historian to mine continuous historical data for interior and exterior plant temperatures, turbine bearing temperatures, generator winding temperatures, power output and system frequency, Cordova Electric Cooperative has used the data in combination with TrendLink to determine equipment failures—preventing downtime and outages. One instance allowed a plant operator to find an issue with a cooling fan that was operating sporadically. The operator isolated the problem, shifted control to adjacent contacts, addressed and corrected the equipment, brought the equipment back on line, and prevented the equipment from being taken out of service. On a daily basis, Cordova Electric Cooperative is using the Canary Labs software to analyze power use patterns, monitor loads on portions of the power grid before, during and after outages, and to perform studies on power factor, voltage levels, load balance and economic dispatch of units.


Water & Wastewater

The water and wastewater industries face tremendous challenges on a daily basis. In addition to infrastructure renewal and replacement demands, a never-ending stream of regulations, product quality, operational optimization, water resource adequacy, and customer satisfaction are on the minds of senior management. Canary Labs delivers many solutions that ease the minds of management through maximized asset performance, increased operating efficiencies and streamlined reporting capabilities used for regulatory compliance.

The City of Boca Raton, Florida has been at the forefront of technology using advanced drinking water and wastewater treatment facilities in support of their customers. Residents rely on the City to supply high quality drinking water by leveraging the largest operational membrane softening process facility in the world.

The City of Boca Raton utility services group struggled with their historical data collection system. When plant management tried to find the root cause of problems or looked for process improvements, the data required was unavailable due to the limited capabilities and reliability of the existing historical data collection system. After investigating, the utility services group determined that the existing OPC enabled products from multiple vendors could be integrated smoothly with the Canary Enterprise Historian, TrendLink, TrendExport and TrendReporter applications to assist in solving their issues.