How the Factry Historian data source for Grafana enables data-driven insights for factory teams

Frederik Van Leeckwyck is the co-founder and CRO at Factry. He oversees go-to-market activities and ensures their software solutions align with real factory demands. Passionate about open technologies, he believes in making data-driven insights accessible to everyone in the factory.

Factories today are often rich in process data, but poor in insights. Despite generating massive volumes of time-series data from thousands of machines, much of that data remains locked away, accessible only to technical experts. Operators, engineers, and decision-makers struggle to extract the right information when they need it. 

In this blog post, we’ll explore how the Factry Historian data source plugin for Grafana addresses this challenge. By extending Grafana with industrial data capabilities, factories can turn raw sensor data into clear, visual insights.

“Templated dashboards powered by Factry Historian’s data source plugin for Grafana enable us to streamline operations,” said Baptist Berlamont, data engineer at Agristo, a company that specializes in the production and distribution of frozen potato products. “We can now track our batch performance across our equipment instantly, saving time and driving smarter, data-driven decisions.”

Read on to learn more about how Grafana and Factry Historian enable seamless data access and analysis — from the shop floor to the boardroom — and how you can get started using the data source today.

Factry Historian + Grafana: opening up data-driven insights

Industrial companies, particularly in the process industry, rely on instrumented production processes controlled by PLCs and SCADA systems. These systems generate enormous volumes of time-series data from tens of thousands of sensors, continuously monitoring process conditions. Yet, turning this data into actionable insights remains a significant hurdle.

Traditionally, accessing and analyzing production data has been restricted to a handful of engineers using vendor-locked historian software. Historians are specialized databases designed to collect, store, and retrieve time-series data from industrial processes. They are optimized for high-speed data logging and are commonly used to track sensor values, machine states, and other critical metrics over time. 

Due to these systems’ complexity and licensing constraints, non-technical users (such as process engineers, operators, and quality teams) are often left without direct access to data, limiting their ability to make informed decisions.

At Factry, we build modern historian software with a strong focus on ease of use. By using open source components, we create flexible, vendor-neutral solutions that are intuitive enough for anyone to use, without needing deep technical skills. Our goal is to make visual process insights accessible to every role in the factory, from operators to the board room. More users require access to drive process improvements and solve operational challenges, including the ones without technical expertise.

For years now, Factry has been a strong advocate for Grafana in industrial environments. As Grafana provides great support for time-series visualization, it’s a natural fit for analyzing large volumes of operational data.

The challenge: simplifying time-series data exploration

Unlocking process data is one thing. Making sense of it is another. Industrial teams often face challenges in efficiently retrieving and contextualizing time-series data due to the way it’s structured in many historian systems and databases.

Common challenges when working with time-series data in plants include:

• Flat data structures make it difficult to locate relevant metrics among thousands of collected values.
• Tag-based organization in time-series databases can introduce continuity issues, such as broken time series when asset structures change.
• Default query behavior can lead to misleading results, such as averaging data across multiple sensors instead of just one.
• Complex query languages (such as Flux or SQL) can be overwhelming for factory users who lack programming skills.

Moreover, simply storing and visualizing time-series data just isn’t enough for industrial power users. They also need:

• Hierarchical browsing. An ISA88/95-style equipment model to navigate data in a structured tree, instead of memorizing tag names.
• Automated metadata handling. Loading units of measurement, scaling, and HI/LO boundaries automatically so data is displayed meaningfully.
• Advanced event overlaying. The option to layer production events on top of time-series data, enabling deeper process analysis.

The solution: the Factry Historian data source for Grafana

To tackle these challenges, Factry built the Factry Historian data source plugin for Grafana. 

By combining Factry Historian with Grafana functionality in industrial environments, the data source offers an intuitive way for both technical and non-technical users to explore and analyze their data. 

Users benefit from Grafana’s powerful visualization capabilities, augmented with industry-specific requirements to reflect real-world factory operations. 

The data source offers the following features to simplify how teams interact with their process data, reducing complexity and making insights accessible to more users.

1. Browsing measurements according to an asset structure

Because data in Factry Historian is structured according to an asset hierarchy, Grafana users can browse this structure quickly to find relevant data, without having to remember complex tag names. For example, in the screenshot below, we’re browsing an asset hierarchy by Enterprise > Site > Area > Equipment > Tag.

Since the Units of Measurement are configured in Factry Historian, they are automatically loaded into Grafana. For example, if your sensor measures temperature in °C, the system can also supply associated min and max values (such as 0 °C – 250 °C) and HI/LO boundaries. This way, you can easily configure Grafana to show thresholds that are meaningful to your process.

2. Making dashboards reusable by using Grafana variables

Dashboard variables are a powerful Grafana feature, especially in an industrial context. Production companies often have multiple similar production lines or reactors, and they want to follow up on them in a consistent manner. By leveraging Grafana variables, you can build a dashboard once and reuse it for different equipment.

The Factry Historian data source for Grafana supports variables corresponding to different Factry Historian elements:

• Asset: Select a parent asset from your configured asset structure.
• Asset Property: Suppose each reactor has “Temperature,” “Pressure,” and “Energy use” properties. These would appear in a dropdown.
• Event Type: If Factry Historian is set to detect batches and downtime events, those appear in the dropdown.
• Event Type Property: For each batch, you might store batchID, recipe, yeast strain—these properties are loaded in the dropdown.
• Measurement: Generates a filterable list of measurements from Factry Historian.
• Database: In case multiple time-series databases are in use (perhaps across different sites), you can filter or select which database to query.

3. Adding annotations for quick visual overviews

Annotations let you place contextual information in the form of a line or region on a Grafana graph. This allows you to quickly correlate production events with process trends, accelerating root cause analysis. 

In industrial applications, you might have:

• A downtime event you want to highlight with a failure reason, or
• A batch production cycle you annotate with batchID or recipe.

With the Factry Historian data source plugin, a user can quickly select an event (for example, a downtime event) and retrieve its batchID or recipe fields. Those then show up as annotations directly on the time-series trends in Grafana.

Success story: Self-service analytics at Agristo

Established in Belgium, Agristo specializes in the production and distribution of frozen potato products. The company has a robust global presence, serving 680 clients across 145 countries and operating from 12 global sales offices. 

Before using Factry Historian and Grafana, it had been difficult for engineers and other stakeholders to access process data without OT and IT support. Now, Agristo uses the Factry Historian data source for Grafana to easily build, maintain, and deploy standardized ad-hoc dashboards. 

“To investigate an oil leakage, I quickly created a dashboard monitoring oil levels in tanks and ovens,” said Nathan Van der Eecken, process engineer at Agristo. “Early data shows that one oven is consuming 40% more than expected. Tracking this will help pinpoint the cause of the issue.”

Users can now access data independently, getting crucial production data into the hands of everyone that needs it, without a query builder or editor.

“With Factry Historian and Grafana, people can now engage with data, understand its meaning, and take actions to enhance operations,” said Van der Eecken. “It’s not just about monitoring processes, it’s about installing a culture of learning and improvement.” 

With a strong focus on sustainability, innovation, and operational excellence, Agristo’s use of Factry Historian and Grafana has helped them optimize production processes, improve efficiency, and streamline troubleshooting.

“By making batch overlays in Grafana straightforward, the plugin enables us to correlate quality data with time-series data,” said Baptist Berlamont, data engineer at Agristo. “It has become indispensable for troubleshooting and improving our operations.” 

Wrapping up and next steps

By combining Grafana’s powerful visualization platform with Factry Historian’s industrial data capabilities, manufacturers gain an accessible, flexible, and scalable solution for process data analysis.

With the Factry data source plugin for Grafana, you can benefit from the following features to turn raw data into meaningful insights:

• Structured asset browsing removes the need to memorize tag names.
• Reusable dashboards reduce setup time and standardize performance monitoring.
• Event overlays provide real-time context for better decision-making.

To learn more about the Factry Historian data source plugin for Grafana please check out this overview page. You can explore and get started with Factry Historian by checking out this GitHub repository, which includes a ready-to-use Docker Compose setup and helpful getting started guides.