Manual: 3.2.1. Select Tags

To start your modeling experience, please choose the tags to be included in the model. Your plant will have many sensors installed that measure a myriad of properties. Many of these will not be relevant for modeling. To guide your selection, please consider the following guidelines:

1. Any tags that the operators regularly modify should go into the model.
2. Any tags that represent important boundary conditions for the process should go into the model.
3. Any tags that have relevance to security, quality, efficiency and monetary value should go into the model.
4. Any tags that are used only during start up, shut down or emergency procedures are probably not relevant for modeling normal operations.
5. Any tags that are used for condition monitoring or similar purposes are not relevant for optimization modeling.

As a rule of thumb, up to 90% of process instrumentation is irrelevant for modeling. In most cases, a process model only requires a few hundred tags even though many thousands may be available.

When in doubt, it is better to include the tag in the model. Too much data is always better than too little data. However, the model will be unwieldy and more time consuming to set up with an increasing number of tags and so it is in your best interest to keep the number of tags relatively low.