System for monitoring and analysis of a continuous process

Abstract

A continuous process, namely the quality control of web production, is monitored and analyzed for defects with high resolution continuously, notwithstanding that the processing of signals for such continuous monitoring and analysis with high resolution requires handling of data at enormous data rates (e.g., billions of calculations per second). The system uses a computer architecture for continuous processing of the data in real time. In a first level of the architecture, signals arriving from the process (from the scanning of successive lines on the web) are digitized, and reduced to represent data corresponding to certain events, such as defects in the web. In a second level of the architecture, an array of parallel processors operate concurrently and continuously on the reduced data to provide outputs characterizing the events, for example, measurements of the locations and extents of the web defects. In a third level the data from the second level is analyzed to provide outputs representing the analysis of the effects in the process represented by the events. These outputs may be used to control the process or to provide information respecting the source of the defects and otherwise to assure that only high quality material is passed.