The Rules Processing System is designed to provide a process engineer with an easy way to implement automated decision making on a process control system without requiring the engineer to write C/C++ code to execute on the system. Instead, it allows the engineer to create a set of Operational Rules which are applied to the control system. An Operational Rule is the combination of a set of criteria with a set of actions to be performed when those criteria are met. For instance, an Operational Rule may specify that the resistance target of a given pot should be altered when that pot attains a specific pot age.
The Operational Rules System consists of a supervisory process running on the control system that manages each of the operational rules, tests the criteria to determine if the rule is satisfied, and, if so, takes the appropriate actions. A single control system may have any number of rules defined, each of which is independently evaluated by the rules manager process. In addition, the Rules Processing System provides a user interface to allow the engineer to create, modify, and load Operational Rules on the control system, as well as to view the status of all installed rules.
Refer to the following sections for further details about the Rules Processing System.
Rule Specifications - Definition of rules and their parameters
Class Libraries - C/C++ API for working with rules
Rules Manager Process - Creating a custom rules processor
User Interface - Creating a custom HMI