A playback tool aims to facilitate post-operations, specially analyzing occurrences. Its need is justified because it allows users to view variations of events and analog points in real time, by using its monitoring screens in a past time, which can be, in some cases, complicated only by observing reports on events and analog values.

It is important to notice that a playback is a tool that permits an expert operator that knows the process to clearly interpret facts. It is not the scope of a playback to automatically identify a solution or a cause of an occurrence.

A practical example of playback usage may be the following:

A user, when starting a working shift, is informed of a severe occurrence that happened at night, around 3:15 AM. Then this user can open on a playback tool a screen that contains the point that generated this event and other related points, just by moving a clock to 3:10 AM and clicking Play. When observing an animated screen with historical data, this user easily monitors the general status of this process, by moving back and forth freely in time until a perfect understanding of what caused that occurrence.