Starting from the eighties of last century, the scientific community met the need of industrial companies for evaluating and assessing the performance of their processes from single pieces of equipment up to entire plants. The evaluation of process/plant performance drove the scientific community to introduce convenient quantitative indexes. Such indicators/indexes allowed measuring the production efficiency by taking into account a number of process variables playing a major role. The capability of evaluating and summarizing in a key index the performance of the process makes the difference between a reliable Key Performance Indicator, KPI and an inconsistent one. Summarizing into a reduced set of indexes a number of complex dynamic responses, produced by a multidimensional process/system, allows measuring quantitatively the performance of industrial plants thus inferring their economic potential and financial attractiveness.
Development of Key Performance Indicators is challenging as various contributes/attributes shall be considered which can satisfy the complex nature and intrinsic diversity of chemical processes.
In PSE Lab, we devise KPIs for any given system/process and find consistent weighing criteria to satisfy the demands of the industry (safety and profits). These KPIs are then integrated to Performance Assessment algorithm which constitutes the software called Performex.
Performance Indicators based on Human Factor constructs are called Operator Performance Indicators.