Anonymous Global Chemical Producer

Precheza, a Czech Republic-based titanium dioxide producer with over 50 years of operational history, faced mounting pressure to modernize its plant data infrastructure to remain competitive in global chemical markets. Exporting approximately 90% of its output internationally, the company relies on precise control of temperature, pressure, and process variables throughout production. Its legacy data historian could not efficiently capture, store, or visualize multiple years of plant data, limiting operators' ability to perform the trend analysis needed for productivity gains and safety assurance. Fragmented software across the business added to operating costs and made cross-system integration difficult.

Precheza transitioned from its legacy historian platform to Rockwell Automation's FactoryTalk (FT) Historian SE, a process data historian designed for high-speed, high-resolution collection from control systems and HMI software. The migration was preceded by a one-year preparatory period covering technical requirements, testing, and contractual agreements. Installation and configuration began in August 2018, with the system going production-ready in January 2019. A three-month parallel operation period followed before the legacy platform was fully decommissioned in March 2019. The most technically demanding element was converting five years of historical data from the incompatible legacy format — a process requiring approximately 20 days of manual verification by Precheza's IT team, systems integrator M-D-J, and distributor ControlTech Ltd.

The implementation was completed in April 2019 with no production downtime. Key outcomes include:

• Reduced annual opex: Unified software under a single vendor eliminated redundant licensing and support costs, with total cost of ownership already comparing favorably to the legacy system.
• Enhanced data availability: FT Historian SE maintains data access even during main server failure and can be serviced during operation without data loss, reducing maintenance burden.
• Multi-year trend visibility: Operators can now analyze and visualize several years of production data in a single environment, enabling deeper process optimization.
• Faster decision-making: Superior reporting and visualization capabilities support more accurate, timely decisions across titanium dioxide production operations.

• A one-year preparatory phase — covering requirements definition, site testing, and vendor alignment — was critical to a smooth, zero-downtime migration.
• Migrating legacy historian data between incompatible systems requires dedicated IT resources; Precheza needed ~20 days of manual verification for five years of data.
• Consolidating automation and data software under a single vendor reduces integration complexity and lowers long-term operating costs.
• Parallel operation periods (Precheza used three months) provide a safety net for validating data continuity before fully decommissioning legacy systems.
• Post-go-live, investment in advanced user training — not just system deployment — is necessary to extract full analytical value from historian platforms.