INDUSTRIAL INTELLIGENCE PLATFORM  ·  HOUSTON, TX
// Architecture

How VALID8A validates
every tag, at plant-floor scale.

A modular validation engine that ingests live tag streams from your DCS, SCADA, edge devices, and historians — scores every value against statistical, physical, and contextual rules, and writes the resulting integrity verdict back into the historian itself. Downstream AI, optimisation, and operations applications then read every value with its quality flag already attached.

System Architecture

A four-tier pipeline from
plant to AI-ready data product.

Each tier is independently scalable, independently deployable, and independently auditable.

01 / Edge & Ingest
DCS / SCADAExperion · DeltaV · CENTUM · PCS 7
Historian ReaderPI · IP.21 · PHD
Edge DeviceIndustrial gateway · DMZ
02 / Validate
SPC EngineCUSUM · EWMA · Western Electric
CleansingRules + ML hybrid
Context TaggingISO 14224 taxonomy
Priority ModelEquipment-driven
03 / Write-back
Historian WriterQuality flags · status codes
Audit TrailImmutable · Tamper-proof
CMMS BridgeHardware health merge
04 / Publish
AI & MLOpsTraining + inference
Optimizers / APCDMC · RMPCT · ProfitOpt
Ops Apps · LIMS · MESOperator + lab + production
Reliability / PerformancePdM · KPI · benchmarking
How It Works

Six engineered stages,
explained step by step.

A walk-through of what happens to a single sensor value as it moves from a transmitter on the unit through VALID8A and out to the consuming AI model or optimiser.

01

Ingestion across every common protocol

Certified protocol adapters pull live values from DCS controllers, SCADA front-ends, OPC-UA devices, and read historian backfill in parallel. The ingestion tier is stateless and horizontally scalable.

OPC-UAPROFIBUSMQTT
02

Statistical health scoring on every tag

Each value is checked against multiple statistical envelopes — range, rate-of-change, CUSUM / EWMA drift, cross-tag correlation, and frozen-value detection. Failures are aggregated into a single health score (0–100) per instrument so engineers see one number, not twelve alarms.

SPCCUSUMEWMAWESTERN ELECTRIC
03

Cleansing — rules first, ML second

Trusted rules handle the obvious: drop frozen values, suppress spikes outside instrument range, gap-fill short comms drop-outs. ML models then handle the subtle cases — analyser drift inside the calibrated range, persistent low-magnitude bias, multi-tag inconsistencies. Every transformation is reversible.

RULE ENGINEML HYBRIDREVERSIBLE
04

Contextual tagging via ISO 14224

Each tag is enriched with its equipment class, process unit, operating mode, and alarm state, so downstream models can distinguish "the column is in a startup transient" from "the temperature transmitter is broken." Context is sourced from your existing tag dictionary and AMS hierarchy.

ISO 14224OPERATING MODEEQUIPMENT CLASS
05

Integrity write-back to the historian

The verdict (VALIDATED · QUESTIONABLE · BAD) and its confidence score are written back into the historian alongside the value — using each historian’s native quality-flag mechanism (PI digital states, IP.21 status, etc.). Every downstream consumer reads the value with the quality verdict already attached.

PI DIGITAL STATESIP.21 STATUSNATIVE QUALITY CODES
06

Audit-trail publish & downstream feed

Every transformation is logged with before / after value, rule that fired, model confidence, and analyst override (if any). Certified-clean streams are published to AI/MLOps pipelines, optimisers, MES, LIMS, and reliability platforms via REST, Kafka, or direct historian write — whichever your stack expects.

RESTKAFKAHISTORIAN WRITE
Sensor Priority Model

Every tag is validated
against the priority of the equipment it serves.

VALID8A inherits each sensor’s priority from the equipment and unit operation it supports — so safety-critical thermocouples are not treated the same way as an advisory wall-temperature indicator. Validation rigour, escalation speed, and audit depth all scale with priority.

Priority class
Driven by
Validation profile
Behaviour on failure
P1 Safety-Critical
SIS · F&G · relief headers · firewater
Tightest thresholds · cross-tag redundancy checks · sub-second cadence
Immediate escalation to operations + I&C; never silently imputed
P2 Control-Critical
APC / MPC inputs · final element feedback
SPC + drift detection · model-readiness scoring · 1-sec cadence
APC graceful-degrade signal raised; substitute or hold last good
P3 KPI-Critical
Yield · energy · custody-transfer · LIMS feed
Rule + ML cleansing · drift watch · 10-sec cadence
Verdict written; KPI calculations annotated with confidence
P4 Advisory
Skin temps · vibration trends · ambient readings
Bulk validation · trend-only · 1-min cadence
Logged for analysis; no live escalation
Where It Fits

Native integration with the systems
your plant already runs.

VALID8A reads from and writes back into the data systems your engineers, operators, and analysts already use. No rip-and-replace; no parallel database for downstream apps to ignore.

Historians

  • OSIsoft PI System
  • AspenTech IP.21
  • Honeywell PHD

DCS

  • Honeywell Experion
  • Emerson DeltaV
  • Yokogawa CENTUM
  • Siemens PCS 7

Asset Mgmt

  • SAP PM
  • Emerson AMS
Deployment Topologies

Runs where your data lives.

Four reference deployments cover the patterns we’ve seen across the energy and chemical sectors. All four support the full validation, write-back, and audit pipeline.

On-prem / DMZ

Containerised stack inside the plant DMZ. Reads from historians and DCS over the L3 network; writes verdicts back through the same boundary.

Common in · Refining · Chemicals

Edge on industrial hardware

Lightweight engine on a hardened industrial gateway, sized for a single unit or wellhead cluster. Ideal for remote sites with intermittent network back-haul.

Common in · Upstream O&G · Midstream

Private cloud

Customer-managed AWS / Azure / GCP tenancy. Best fit for enterprises consolidating multiple sites into a single validation layer feeding shared AI pipelines.

Common in · Integrated operators

Air-gapped

Fully offline deployment for high-security environments. Audit-trail export via approved one-way data diodes; no inbound network dependencies whatsoever.

Common in · SIS-adjacent · Defence-adjacent
Standards Alignment
ISA-95 OPC-UA ISO 14224
Talk to an Engineer

Want a deep-dive on your
specific stack?

A 30-minute architecture review with our process automation engineers. Bring your historian, DCS, and AI/MLOps platforms — we’ll walk through exactly how VALID8A would sit in the middle.

Contact Us
jack.stout@valid8a.ai  ·  ANSWERED WITHIN ONE BUSINESS DAY