Monitor All Changes

This my sound crazy but is there a simple way to log and timestamp all data changes on contrologix from the hmi? We have many process lines that have hundreds of variables that can be changes to adjust the process. We have some people that are bad about changing multiple thangs and not telling anyone or recording it and sometimes they don't even know what they are changing.

Locking it down is not a option because many times it is the process engineers that mess things up and then i have to figure out what they did. It is kind of like looking for a needle in a haystack and you don't even know that it is a needle you are looking for.

I would just like to monitor every parameter that is changable through the HMI and time stamp what it was and what it changed to in some easy fasion. Every way i can think of is really involved. Any simple ideas?

If I had to do it, I would use something like the historian in say Ignition. I'd import every variable I wanted to examine and just set it for historical logging. When a variable changed(you could set a deadband to ignore) it would simply log the change and what it changed to. You'd also have a record of what it was previously.
I'd imagine any of the historian packages could accomplish this if you already have one.

Or, assuming you have a SCADA that can write to sql talking to this system.

Just write a sql query to dump the current process variables you are interested in to a database every x time period. Not a handy because you are recording things that haven't changed as well, but by goodness you will have a record of what the values are.

What is the HMI system ?

Operation changes, like setpoint changes and alarm acknowledgements, etc, get logged into the FactoryTalk Audit subsystem of FactoryTalk AssetCentre when you have it configured with and connected to FactoryTalk View SE.

I've done a couple of FactoryTalk AssetCentre implementations focusing on Disaster Recovery and version control, but I'm learning about the Audit system since it's running along in the background.

I should have mentioned this in my OP but the HMI system is FT View SE Station.

The Plc Kid said:

I should have mentioned this in my OP but the HMI system is FT View SE Station.

Click to expand...

I would expect that you can use FT View SE to log every change, and not burden the PLC with all that record keeping. Granted, its easier to edit a PLC program than the SE app...

Historian ME! They're so glorious