Operator Performance

Emerson's Juan Carlos Bravo highlights the human centered design improvements in the DeltaV version 11 release. His focus in this 5-minute YouTube video is on the DeltaV operator displays.

Much of the design comes from the research conducted with the Center for Operator Performance and the Emerson Human Centered Design Institute. I summarized some of this research in posts such as Operator Display Color Usage Study, Color Considerations in Alarm Design, Avoiding Abnormal Situations with Better Alarm Management, and Center for Operator Performance Seeks to Improve Operator Effectiveness.

In the video, Juan Carlos shows the results of the application of the research findings. At the 0:35 mark, he shows a common way operator graphics were designed with lots of colors and fancy 3D shapes. At 0:58, he shows the issues with the school of thought around grayscale graphics. It's like switching from your color TV back to black & white TV.

The other issue Juan Carlos highlights is that typically process variables (PVs) were presented on operator graphics without the context of deviations, location in range, proximity to alarm limits, etc. The HCD research found that operators respond more effectively to patterns, shapes, forms, and trends. At 1:45, Juan Carlos shows four palettes of colors or themes that help avoid the issues operators had with grayscale graphic.

At 2:15, he shows additional templates that were added to provide more visual context than simple PV display. For example, a pressure control loop display shows an operating range bar with a bar showing the current PV, the visual location of the setpoint, and percent in range.

The intent of these simple visuals is to allow operators to scan the displays to quickly spot patterns of abnormalities. The faster abnormal situations can be identified, the great the chance that operator can take action to avoid unplanned shutdowns, equipment failures, or other potential consequences.

With the recognition that experienced operators are retiring at an increasing rate in some world areas, Juan Carlos shows at 2:45 how the labels on the operator displays can be changed to show more friendly names. This helps inexperienced operators learn the process. For example, instead of showing PC701_02 for the distillation column pressure controller, the friendly name might be "Pressure Control".

One final item I'll highlight from the video is contextual alarm knowledge. At 3:15, Juan Carlos shows how additional information can be provided with the help button for a given alarm. His example shows an estimated time to respond, how long the alarm has been active, and the consequences of inaction. Recommended actions can be provided along with probable causes and design information associated with the control loop. Juan shares several different ways to populate this knowledge at 3:40. Also, a search tool was added to help locate things more quickly.

Operator performance is a large area for human centered design improvement. Converting the research into software for the operator can help reduce the time that abnormal situations are spotted and addressed.

One of the things that makes some blogs so valuable is the technical expertise they can share with words, pictures, audio, and video. One example is Bruce Greenwald's Process Control Musings blog. Bruce is a VP of engineering services for the RE Mason Company, an Emerson local business partner in the Carolinas. The post that brought this to mind was Securing IE for Alarm Response Procedures.

Bruce received a question from a person with a major pharmaceutical manufacturer. It was about being able to call up documents inside the Syncade Document Control and Archiving module from a DeltaV control system operator display. Bruce described the problem:

The potential roadblock they hit was a security risk. If you look at the IE [Internet Explorer] window that the PDF appears in, you'll notice the menu bar is present. The risk is if someone were to click on the File menu, then click on Save As... - they could start dropping html files all over the DeltaV system. Just as critical is having the toolbar buttons or the address bar along the top.

Bruce described a solution with words and pictures:

Click on Start, then Run... and type gpedit.msc - drill in to User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> Windows Components -> Internet Explorer. Then look for a Setting named "Turn on menu bar by default". Double click on it and change it to Disabled. That gets rid of the menu bar.

Bruce also described how to remove the Internet Explorer address bar through changes in the registry settings.

At the end, he shows the finished secure look of an Internet Explorer PDF document with the browser address bar and menu bars from the displayed PDF file removed.

Every day people at process manufacturers, process automation companies, integrators, and others share the answers to questions like these. The overwhelming majority of the time this knowledge is trapped in email inboxes and sent items folders.

Thank you Bruce for sharing this with the world, especially with the next person trying to do something similar. Your post will undoubtedly be at or near the top of their search results. Anyone else willing to share his or her expertise?

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Chemical Processing magazine has a great article, Build Operator Expertise Faster, written by folks from the Center for Operator Performance (COPS). The article provides recommendations for how best to transfer the expertise of experienced plant operators who are rapidly approaching retirement age. The article opening well describes the challenge:

Most process plants are struggling with the dual challenges of increased requirements for safe and efficient operation and expected retirement of a large portion of the workforce. Sites likely will lose substantial expert knowledge at a time when it's of greatest need. This will ratchet up pressure to more quickly develop expertise in newer operators.

I highlighted some of COPS' research on operator performance in earlier posts. As one of the consortium's founding members, Emerson is applying the research in its product development efforts to improve usability for operators, engineers, and other plant staff members.

University engineering curriculum stress not only theory, but also practical application in labs, programming courses, internship opportunities, etc. It's a way to apply the knowledge and gain experience in what it takes to be a practicing engineer. Likewise, for operators the authors write:

Acquiring knowledge isn't enough, though. Novices also must engage in deliberate practice applying that knowledge, recognizing key information, setting goals and executing actions.

Some do's and don'ts include don't have experienced operators give "data dumps" of what they know, do review actual events and ask inexperienced operators for possible causes. Performing scenarios of production rate changes and abnormal situations are also good learning experiences.

In an earlier operator training post featuring Emerson's Jeff Hackney, I described a project where these scenarios were developed to train operators:

...simulation includes a dynamic model with startup and shutdown exercises and 33 training scenarios to help prepare the operators to work through simulated abnormal plant situations. Instructor graphics allow the refinery instructor to perform activities such as isolation valves opening and closing, and manual drain and filling valves not controlled from the plant DeltaV automation system.

The authors note one of the unintended consequences of improved automation technology is that it can diminish expertise. As the systems get smarter and perform more advanced controls it takes away some of the analytical skills required. The authors note:

Automation can diminish expertise in three ways. First, it can dull the skills of veterans. Second, it can slow the rate of learning, so people take much longer to build up their expertise. And third, it can teach dysfunctional skills that will actively interfere with building expertise in the future.

They recommend creating visual decision trees that reflect the decisions the advanced controls are making. This helps operators to see the changes and assess why they are being made to understand the process better.

There's also some do's and don'ts presented on on-the-job training and tailored operating training based upon expertise level. The article is worth reading if you are facing the prospects of experienced operators approaching retirement age.

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At Emerson Exchange 2009, Lubrizol's Bob Wojewodka and Emerson's Terry Blevins presented, Benefits Achieved Using On-Line Data Analytics. Lubrizol and Emerson have worked together to develop on-line batch analytics as a beta test. The objective was to demonstrate on-line prediction of quality and economic parameters and evaluate different means of on-line fault detection and identification.

The intent was to document the benefits of this approach and learn from the test with data and usability feedback for product development of these batch analytics capabilities. Some of the challenges of applying online data analytics in a batch process are process holdups, access to lab data, variations in feedstock, varying operating conditions, concurrent batches, and assembly and organization of the data.

The foundation for this project was to form a multi-discipline, collaborative team that includes plant operations. They developed a workflow process to capture team input using an "input-process-output" data matrix to capture and explain the information required for the data analysis. It was important to integrate lab and truck shipment data by creating a workflow process with the plant's SAP enterprise planning system.

Calculated property estimation was performed on feed tank quality and other non-directly measured properties. The instrumentation was surveyed and loop tuning performed to improve process control. And, a formal training program was established so that everyone was knowledgeable about the new work processes.

For the data analytics, it was important to identify among a wide number of inputs and process variables how these variables relate and which ones have the greatest impact on product quality. These analytics could also predict the end of batch quality while the batch was running. The team had good correlation between the predicted end of batch, what the lab samples indicated, and what the end of batch time actually turned out to be.

The analytics were developed for two batch processes, where the output of the first fed the second process, as well as provided finished output.

Over the three-month period, a process fault was detected using the on-line analytics. A problem was identified a problem with the mass flow meter. This occurred during the initial training, so the operations team quickly embraced these analytics. The on-line analytics also discovered a problem with a hot oil heating system. They discovered the process with the first batch and estimated it would have taken weeks to find with traditional methods. This alone paid for the efforts by the collaborative team's time in this effort. The benefits have been seen from the operators through senior management.

So asks one of the liveliest conversations going on the Process Automation Usability Project site. The thread begins with an observation by the Putman Media staff:

Many recent accidents have clearly identified the contribution of bad alarm management practices as a major contribution. Action has been taken by regulators, standards bodies and customer forums to provide good guidance on alarm improvement, targets have been set through organizations like EEMUA who have effectively raised the bar in all industrial sectors. However, many struggle still with alarm management, especially alarm floods, and will continue to, until they address their HMI issues.

The observation continues with points about incidents caused by loss of the big picture, data overload, missed information or alarms. It closes with:

What we have today does not work and has proven that it exposes us to unacceptable risk.

Currently the forum thread has ten responses. ARC Advisory Group's Larry O'Brien observes that with many migration projects a lot of energy is put into preserving the "old way" of doing things.

Emerson's Aaron Crews, whose expertise we featured several times on this blog, added:

I have done migrations where the exact layout and overcrowdedness of the graphics is preserved but the colors have moved towards the grayscale look. That just doesn't get it done.

I think that the operators should have a lot of input in what the new graphics look like, but I would start with how they operate the plant, which units go down together, which numbers they constantly watch, and what the common problems and complaints are and go from there. The results are well worth the investment, in my experience.

A responder to Aaron's comment echoed the importance of the operators in the process, but that the engineers need to share some of the capabilities that new technology brings to see beyond the current operating paradigm. And, each industry has its own performance criteria and this impacts what the most relevant information should be.

I shared a summary of some research performed by the Center for Operator Performance from an earlier post. Putman's Keith Larson shared a link to an excellent overview of HMI design article from a recent Control magazine.

The thread closes with operator feedback on grayscale-graphics and how function follows form:

If you want operators to optimize process performance, give them process performance information. If you want operators to optimize process economics, give them economic data.

For this single forum-based conversation, there were perspectives given by industry analysts, editors, project engineers, process automation professionals, researchers, etc.

If you have thoughts on aspects of process automation usability, join in and share your viewpoints.

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Today is the first of two guest blog posts this week. Aaron Crews graciously agreed to write this while I'm goofing off this week on vacation. Thanks Aaron!

Jim is a brave soul to hand over the keys to the blog while he's on vacation this week. Hopefully I don't do too much damage while he's gone. If I do, maybe Mike Boudreaux can help me roll back the odometer before Jim returns.

As you might remember from some previous posts on this blog, I am an engineer with The Automation Group (TAG), which is part of the Emerson Process Management family. We provide management and technical services for all types of process control system projects. I thought I would take this opportunity to share a story from one of my past projects.

Here at TAG, one major focus of our work is on DCS modernization projects. These projects arise for a variety of reasons, usually including system maintenance issues, a desire to take advantage of new technologies, and to improve overall plant performance.

A big part of this last goal depends on the operators. The importance of data visualization in the operator interface, alarm management, and human-centered design within the HMI have all been hot topics for that reason. In a modernization project, however, that is only part of the equation.

The operator is required to make a big adjustment from the old system to the new one. Graphics may look totally different, navigation between screens is done in a different way, alarm notification and acknowledgement isn't the same as it used to be, and even the way in which the operator physically interacts with the control system can be different.

Every project includes an operator training component, but as anyone who has been through training knows, it's different once you're on your own. That is one reason why we usually recommend a hot cutover between the old and new systems - so that operations gets some transition time and experience before the critical parts of the process are cut over.

On this particular project, however, the trepidation from plant operations was especially strong. In migrating from RS3 to DeltaV, they were changing from a dedicated keyboard with a trackball and keys with particular functions that they had memorized to a traditional keyboard and mouse. After going through some training and getting their hands on the new system, the operators began to feel like it just wasn't going to work for them. Pretty soon, a dedicated keyboard had become a make or break issue for the project.

It was hard to disagree with how they felt. As a "power user" of several pieces of software, I know I can work dramatically faster and more productively when I utilize keyboard shortcuts. Eventually everyone will get used to the new system, but the process doesn't stop and wait for operators to work their way back up to speed.

As an engineer, though, I appreciate a challenge, and I was able to come up with a solution that would please the operators, mitigate the safety and production risks associated with the modernization, and put the project back on track. Using the flexibility of the DeltaV system and its built-in key macro functionality, my project team customized a commercial off-the-shelf, physical, programmable keyboard for DeltaV.

The top half of the keyboard was dedicated to display navigation, giving the operator single-button access to any graphic. The bottom half of the keyboard had a layout designed to mimic that of their RS3 keyboards, with analogous functions assigned to each key.

Needless to say, the keyboards were a hit. They didn't require custom software on the DeltaV stations, they didn't require specialized knowledge to maintain or replace, and the fixed-button layout allowed for quick "muscle-memory" reaction to the process while always keeping the operator focused on what he is doing and not how to do it. The keyboards were not required so eventually they could be removed if the operators decided that they prefer the regular keyboard and mouse.

Half of the 5000+ I/O was cut over hot, and the rest was cut over during a short turnaround, and the plant was brought back up without incident. I have visited the plant several times since then as they have gone through a couple of DeltaV upgrades and the keyboards are still going strong. They are enjoying all the advantages of DeltaV and experiencing none of the worries that they had with their previous generation control system.

Thanks again to Jim for the invitation to contribute here. If you'd like to learn more about what we are up to at TAG or if you have any questions, you can email me, follow me on twitter, or find us on Facebook.

I received an email from the Center for Operator Performance (COP) about a newly completed study, Color Usage in Graphic Displays for Process Control. Emerson is one of the founding members along with members from process manufacturing, academia, EPCs, and automation suppliers. Emerson's Mark Nixon, who leads the research efforts for the DeltaV system, is also the chairman for these research efforts at the COP.

The center oversees research to meet the needs of the members and is responsible for contracting universities and human factors companies to conduct the research. The center also serves as a repository for human factors data in process control and training in human factors as requested by the members. Research interests include the following:

Expertise - With attrition of operators, much expertise is walking out the door of process plants. What makes an expert operator? What skills does an expert possess that a novice does not? How can novices become experts faster?

Simulator Effectiveness - While simulators in general are a wonderful tool for enhancing operator performance, their application in process control has historically yielded mixed results. What are the key attributes of a successful simulator training program? How important is simulator fidelity in the success of training?

Graphics & Data Presentation - Process operators deal with thousands of process variables that ultimately become the basis for a single decision. How can graphics better support this effort? What impact does background color have? Does the use of one color for more than one meaning impact performance?

Alarm Actuation Rate - What is the upper limit for alarm processing? How long can this limit be sustained without impacting performance?

The Operator Display and Color Usage study is the first of a multi-part study investigating the overall topic of display design. In this study, the researchers reviewed the current literature, surveyed operators, and visited a number of operating sites. A key component of this project was to bring the researchers up-to-speed with what the state-of-the-art is in the petrochemical industry.

As part of their learning, the researchers were looking for evidence on whether or not best practices related to color and visualizations are being followed. The 99-page color usage study is available for members of COP and was prepared by Dr. Jennie Gallimore and Jennifer Shinkle, with Wright State University. With Emerson as a member, I was able to get my hands on a copy and here are a few things I gleaned. If you're interested in the full research, here's the COP contact page.

One conclusion that the researchers came back with was that although there is considerable research on the use of color and other visualization techniques for display design, guidelines specific to the petrochemical industry are scarce. Color as well as other guidelines such as position, form, and animation could potentially help display designers to improve their overall display implementations.

The researchers also made another observation; color is probably not the most pressing problem, a bigger factor is the overwhelming number of displays and the design and presentation of the information on these displays. For example, although mimic displays such as P&ID's are simple enough to create, they are not necessarily the best way to present information to operators. Further studies are required to look into better ways to organize and present information on displays.

The research was performed working with U.S. refining and petrochemical manufacturers and their operations staff. The mean age of study participants was 46 with an average of 16 years experience. The report notes that more than half of the research participants have some form of corrected vision. As someone in this age demographic and needing those "cheater glasses" myself for dimly lit rooms, I can appreciate this growing trend.

The research also looked at lighting conditions in the operator rooms, environmental conditions (temperature, humidity, noise, and vibration), total colors used in operator displays, alarm-related colors used, and different aspects of display element effectiveness. It looked at many other things too, including display technology, considerations in vision and color perception, and ways color is used in visual displays. From the responses, the study points to opportunities for improvement to better define color usage and visualization guidelines.

I asked Mark his key take away from the research. Mark notes that although there is considerable research behind visual encoding techniques, that research has not made its way into our industry. A key challenge that people responsible for configuring displays face are that there are few guidelines describing best practices and for the best practices that do exist, there is very limited research proving that the techniques actually work in our industry. The center's goal is to provide that research. A well-designed operator interface will improve overall plant operations and environmental, health and safety conditions. The members of the COP share these objectives and are jointly funding this research.

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I've known Emerson's Cindy Scott a long time in our days building the DeltaV brand, and even earlier. I've not known Cindy to be versed in the use of the Queen's English by spelling words such as color, colour. I can only assume the article I read, Don't let colours hide the alarms!, had the hand of an editor to convert Cindy's words.

The technology change for operator display screens has been dramatic from the introduction of distributed control systems in the 1970s. The early versions had eight colors choices to choose from including "blink". So red and blinking red were two of your eight choices.

Today's human machine interface (HMI) software supports what the current PC graphics cards support, which is typically 16.7 million colors. And of course, these 16.7 million colors can blink, or bounce, or rotate, etc. Also, display resolution has increased from a typical 640x480 pixel grid, to 1280x1024 pixels, up to 1680x1050 widescreen.

Many company and plant standards were developed while the display technologies were less mature. The ANSI/ISA-S5.5 Graphic Symbols for Process Displays standard came out in 1985, which was also during this early display technology stage. These standards have not kept pace with the technology changes and are in revision by the ISA101 committee. Cindy wrote:

When systems were upgraded, the plant display standards were not updated to incorporate the capabilities of the new display technologies, so the basic display layout and colour schemes were maintained. Although this makes sense to minimise cost and operator disruption, it forgoes many of the potential benefits of current graphics capabilities.

Having all these technology advances and extra colors does not necessarily improve the performance of operators. The article asked some thought-provoking questions when it comes to color and the design of plant operator screens:

• How many colors are too many?
• Which are the 'right' colors to use?
• When is it appropriate to use dynamic color?
• How much data is too much data?
• What alarms are needed and where should they be shown?

The article does not answer all these tough questions, but does illuminate some of the existing research and does offer ideas for process manufacturers to consider in their operator display design standards.

Cindy cited the research of North Carolina State University's Christopher Healey in 'preattentive" visual processing:

Healey points out that for a particular item to be picked out rapidly from a group of socalled distracters, there must be a single difference between the desired item and the distracters. Thus a red item can be spotted readily among a group of blue items of the same size and shape, while a round item can quickly be picked out of a group of square items of the same size and colour. On the other hand, a red circle in a group of red squares and blue circles will not leap out from the screen and must be found by searching.

Cindy also shared the work of the University of Southern California's iLab, which researched the effect of color, shape, and object orientation. Changes in an object's color can be lost if the color matches other background colors. If the change has a unique color and shape, it is much more easily detectable.

Applying the results of this research is not always easy in operator display alarming. Operators are used to the status quo and may resist changes. Automation suppliers may also want to keep the existing standards that may favor their automation systems. Change occurs through a process of analysis, review, and buy-in among the operations, maintenance, and plant engineering staffs.

Cindy's key takeaway is to be judicious in the use of colors. She concludes:

It is important for control system display designers to resist the temptation to add colour to everything, and to use it only where it conveys useful information. Bright colours should be reserved for things that must be seen such as alarms, and must not be masked by using the same colours for non-critical items. Reducing operator errors and accidents hinges on an understanding of visual perception mechanisms.

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I just read a great article, How to Achieve Competent Workforce for Safety, in the May edition of Automation World magazine. Written by editor-in-chief, Gary Mintchell (also of Feed Forward blog, Automation Gear blog and Twitter fame), this article looks at the people side of ensuring safety. It examines some of the existing regulations and standards around competency, views from both process and discrete automation suppliers and views from safety-focused organizations.

Emerson's Chuck Miller is quoted in the article and has long articulated the role of people in effective safety programs. The article notes that both the U.S. Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) and the global IEC organizations, through the IEC 61508 and IEC 61511 standards, "state that people involved with the safety lifecycle must be competent in the area in which they deal."

The safety lifecycle covers a broad spectrum of responsibilities, and Chuck notes, "even people we consider to be safety experts may not be expert in all areas of the lifecycle. For example, a reliability engineer may know a lot about the equipment, but may not be able to competently go into the plant and effectively calibrate and maintain that equipment."

The article describes the top-down support and commitment to build a strong safety culture with competent people across all phases of the safety lifecycle. To help in this competency requirement, Emerson developed a safety management system built according to IEC 61511 and had its processes audited and certified by TÜV in 2006.

A safety management system should clearly define the organization, competency policy, safety audit procedures and the safety lifecycle activities. Good guidelines exist to help. The United Kingdom's Health and Safety Executive (HSE) in 2007 published, Managing competence for safety-related system, Part 1: Key Guidance. It includes 16 principles across the plan, design, operate and audit/review phases of the safety lifecycle.

Emerson's safety management system defines clear policies and processes, roles, role competency requirements and the training/experience required to achieve the identified skills for each role. Examples of roles in the project phase are SIS consultants, SIS project leads, SIS software engineering personnel, SIS hardware engineering personnel, and SIS field equipment engineering personnel. In addition to an employee's work experience, a key part of Emerson's safety competency requirements program is the Certified Functional Safety Expert (CFSE) certification. I did a quick search on the list of CFSE/CFSP certified safety professionals and counted more than 60 global Emerson folks that are now certified.

I caught up with Mike Boudreaux to find other ways that Emerson helps end users to address their SIS competency requirements. Thorough knowledge of the entire safety system is important. Competency requirements should apply to all of the components that make up the SIS, from the sensor to the final element and everything in between. Here are some ways that Emerson is helping:

• SIS Seminars that include a safety overview, discussion of SIS applications and a discussion of the safety lifecycle
• PlantWeb University SIS courses that are free online courses that provide a good overview of IEC 61508/61511 safety lifecycle concepts.
• Process Safety Training Courses that cover the Analysis and Realization phases of the IEC 61511 safety lifecycle
• Training courses on the SIS components that Emerson supplies, including the sensors, logic solvers, final elements, and safety lifecycle tools.
• Emerson has supported the development of the CSFE/CSFP programs through participation on the CFSE Governance Board. The governance board is an independent board that administers certification tests for CFSE.

Mike also points out, "competency goes beyond knowledge of the concepts and technologies that are used to implement an SIS. Good design and implementation reduces the random and common cause hardware failures. It is in preventing the systematic failures where managing competency throughout the entire safety lifecycle becomes so important. For many end users, this means that developing competency management in the Operation phase is very critical."

Knowledge of the process application and the hazards involved is a must. IEC 61511 also calls out the need for "adequate management and leadership skills appropriate to their role in the safety lifecycle activities" as part of competency. This has a lot to do with the type of people that you employ and the company culture that you develop. It is not something that can be created overnight and it takes a long-term commitment to be successful.

Update: Welcome Feed Forward blog readers!

Earlier this month my DeltaV News RSS feed announced the availability of an alarm management whitepaper written by the ARC Advisory Group. The paper, Emerson Strategies for Abnormal Situation Avoidance & Alarm Management, describes an issue many process manufacturers face in dealing with too many alarms. This makes it hard for their operators to distinguish between critical impending abnormal events and nuisance alarms.

The Emerson approach to address better management of alarms is based upon ARC's Six-Sigma DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) model and

...includes data collection, statistical analysis, alarm evaluation, and system improvement - all within the context of ongoing evaluation and continuous improvement.

Relative to alarm management, the whitepaper describes the DMAIC process:

Define relates to philosophy development, Measure relates to determining alarm behavior and alarm effectiveness, Analyze relates to root cause analysis and performance benchmarking, and Improve relates to the remedial action necessary to align the prevailing implementation with the alarm philosophy. Finally, Control relates to alarm execution.

Advancing technology is a source of the alarm proliferation. The authors note:

In the days of hardwired controls and alarms, engineers were very stingy with alarms, in part because each alarm point had a cost. The primary issue with alarm systems is there is too much information for an operator to assimilate and act on. Ten years ago, it cost about one thousand dollars to add an alarm. Current automation systems have essentially eliminated the cost of adding more alarms and, therefore, the incentive to limit or rationalize their number.

I have an upcoming post that discusses the importance of up-front planning your alarm strategy when you're planning your project's functional requirements. But what do you do in an existing facility with an alarm overabundance?

The whitepaper addresses building a business case to justify and alarm management project. The keys areas build the business case include safety, unplanned downtime, better information management and reduced troubleshooting time, and changing the role of the operator toward higher-value activities.

ARC notes that unplanned shutdown costs process manufacturers on aggregate between 2 percent and 5 percent annually. This may be a justification opportunity by looking at root causes of unplanned shutdowns in your plant. A review of the alarm and event logs around these incidents can reveal the number alarms the operators saw and the actions they took as a result.

The whitepaper also addresses the important role of the EEMUA Publication 191--Management of Process Alarms in developing your alarm management strategy. A guiding principle described in EEMUA 191:

...a usable alarm system must be relevant to the user's role at the time, indicate clearly what response is required, and be presented at a rate the user can deal with, and be easy to understand.

With this backdrop, the paper explores the applications within Emerson's DeltaV system like the Event Chronicle, integration with 3^rd-party alarm management applications via the OPC alarms and events communication standard, and the DeltaV Analyze alarm analysis program. Coupling these applications with alarm management services can help process manufacturers through the process of data collection, statistical analysis, alarm evaluation, and system improvement.

And much like the safety lifecycle as defined by the IEC 61511 international safety standard, ongoing evaluation of the overall alarm strategy is important throughout the lifecycle of the plant.

I just received my November copy of Automation World magazine. In it is an article, Improving Human Effectiveness. Given the fact that I'm human and always seeking to improve my effectiveness, I had to give it a read.

The article is about the work of the Center for Operator Performance, a consortium from academia, engineering and automation suppliers and process manufacturers. Current members include Emerson, ABB, BP, Flint Hills Resources, Marathon Pipeline, Nova Chemicals, Suncor Energy, Wright State University, and Beville Engineering. The Operator Performance website is described as:

An alliance of academic and process companies to research generic issues in human factors and process operator performance. The goal is an open and low-cost forum for the identification, analysis, and dissemination of research in such areas as selection/training, interface design, decision aides, automation, procedures, and control room design.

Duane Toavs, a director of Emerson's Ease of Use Center was interviewed for the article. I know Duane from way back when he put one of the first Foundation fieldbus-based systems for a major oil producer on Alaska's North Slope in 1997. I can assure you from personal experience that it's not a fun to visit in mid-December!

In the article, Duane notes that operating companies outnumber the automation suppliers in the consortium by design, since they are, "...the experts in how well overall projects go." The intent is also to have these companies drive the research in the areas that will deliver the highest business benefit.

The Center's first research project looked at military combat decision-making exercises to perhaps use some of their ideas and apply it to decision support for plant operators. That's always one of my favorite tactics--to borrow good ideas from completely different areas and apply them to the problem at hand.

The study has revealed some surprises such as the most difficult units in a plant did not necessarily have the most expert operators. It seems that advanced controls apply this expertise. Also, there was not a correlation between operator age and experience. Some of these findings suggest that advanced control can help mitigate some of the expertise being lost to retirement.

Some of the future research ideas include early event detection, alarm actuation rate, simulator usage, and effective use of color/shape coding in graphic displays.

If you are looking for ways to increase the effectiveness of your operators, you may to join or visit their site from time to time. I've had a chance to speak with some members from the Center for Operator Performance team and suggested they start blogging to help interested parties better keep up with their progress. I have my RSS search enabled waiting to notify me if/when they do!