Getting out from behind the desk/ control terminal!

 

The above comment was made to me by an oil and gas company, and when I enquired to their expectation, it was clear that they wanted to empower "controllers" (operators) to be responsible for more. Enable decisions to be made faster while also gaining consistency across teams and shifts.

Transforming the traditional role of sitting in a control room behind a terminal, to a dynamic role, where the operator can get up and roam to investigate, make decisions and take actions in a timelier manner. This concept embraces all of the concepts this blog has raised over the last couple of months and shows the transition in the industrial sector to focusing operational empowerment.   

By unleashing the controller from their seat, they are free to investigate, see for themselves, and interact with others with experience to make informed decisions faster.

What is the reason why users have been locked to the desk/ control room, why has this transition not happened successfully before?

It is simple, the requirement to be monitoring the plant. A traditional control room is the central place alarms, notifications were traditionally piped.

So to free up the user, to leave the control room, the user needs to empowered with situational plant awareness, freed from monitoring, shifting to the experience of exception based notification. As the user roams the plant, the user is still responsible, and aware, and able to make decisions across the plant he is responsible for even if he not in view of that a particular piece of equipment. Driving the requirement for the mobile device the user carries to allow notification, drill thru access to information and ability to collaborate so the dependency to sit in the control room has lifted.

The challenge with the “Integrated Operational Centers”,  these centers which are set up for sites, multi site control, is the responsibility of the operators is significantly increased, in some cases going from 100s of possible alarms to 10000s alarms, and the user is unable to monitor the system must be exception based.

The discussion of two weeks ago with “Advanced Process Graphics” is key as this provides and exception based view to the plant. “just follow the color” that easily shows the controller of pending situations. As the user needs to drill through to understand the situation he just clicks’ on the color no matter where it is on the screen, removing the barrier of having to learn the navigation of the device.

This situation was illustrated two weeks ago when I observed a user start from a desk top on a situation, leave the desk, where he had one layout, and then move to IPAD experience where the same information was displayed but a different layout. The user did not have to worry, as the screen on IPAD was grey, except for the particular equipment at fault which had a red outline. Watching the user he did care about the layout he just clicked the color and followed the drill through by following the color.

So freeing up people is not just about providing  mobile data and information must free them to navigate with freedom, no matter the format, no matter where they start an activity, and have access to everything.   Why now? The technology is here with wireless plants, commodity devices to suite different applications/ roles, and the desire and culture to enable the flexible team, and design to enable exception based notification.

Over the next few years this area of exception based design, and like the discussion last week “model driven” significant advances will be forth coming.  

Operational Windows Enable a Form a Operational Control

I have talked about the drive by many companies to reduce “Operational Variation” across plants, teams, and industries. This is a key part of "virtual situation room". As I continue to talk with different companies this theme continues to grow and come up, many companies do not understand or realize they implementing steps towards it but when you discuss the underlying goals it is true.

There are many ways that operational control will be implemented, as pointed out it could be through actions and processes becoming embedded and certainly this will be the big driver in the road to “Operational Excellence”.

But another way is through displaying key operational indicators to a knowledge worker, where  these indicators are mapped within boundary conditions. These boundaries are set up based on the time and relevance to the role and activity/ task the knowledge worker is performing. This sort of “Operating Window” enables the knowledge worker the context, and recommendations, knowledge to enable operational decisions in a timely and ever consistent way. This same operational window can be used over multiple sites/ and teams for that role and activity providing consistency control.

The figure below is an example of an operational window.

Placing this sort of operational window where the operational boundaries come from the business strategy but in context of the role and activity no matter where in the plant operational team, but the feedback and running side is real-time from the plant. This window is place adjacent to  current control/ HMI screens the operator is using, or the maintenance or process screens the users are working, and you start the transformation to a knowledge worker. 
Next week I discuss an example where the above technique has shown dramatic results in operational variation in "Operational Control is it Real?"

Where on the left you can see the operational running trend, but you can see the changing boundary conditions of operation based upon product etc., The green shows the area where optimum control, safety, and production performance is. The right hand side you have reasons, and number instances of deviations for periods out of operational control.