Invensys Protocol Magazine – "The Human differentiator – beyond technology"

March/April 2013 | 1

MARCH/APRIL 2013

EVENTS | TECH TIPS | TRAINING | SUPPORT

The human differentiator

Beyond technology

The high-performance HMITrade in those ambiguous and fl ashy displays for productive ones

Human-level process controlConfi dence in dealing with the unexpected

Process simulationThe key to effective training

From labour worker to performance manager – things are changing

MES and the human factorEffective decisions or biased opinions?

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www.protocolmag.co.za

Protocol MagazineOwner and Publisher: Invensys Operations Management Southern Africa

Marketing Manager: Jaco Markwat [email protected]

Editor: Denis du Buisson, GMT [email protected]

Advertising Sales: Heather Simpkins, The Marketing [email protected]

Distribution:Nikita Wagner [email protected]

ContributorsMany thanks to the following for their contributions to this issue of the magazine:

Contents2 Editor’s notes

3 Stop complaining, start training

5 Human-level process control and ArchestrA Workfl ow

11 Product profi le: ArchestrA Workfl ow Software

17 Why should you consider ArchestrA Workfl ow Software?

20

Plant Engineering names ArchestrA Workfl ow software from Invensys a Product of the Year

22 Workforce empowerment

23The resilient plant: The truth about building capabilities for workforce enablement

30 Minimising time-to-experience and maximising performance

34Product profi le: EYESIM Immersive Virtual Reality Training System

38Operator simulator training improves GenOn power station effi ciency

42 Product profi le: IntelaTrac for improved situation awareness

45Plant operational excellence at Infi neum thanks to Wonderware IntelaTrac

50 From labour worker to performance manager

53 Empowering people to contribute with DPM

54

Dynamic Performance Measurement system improves energy and electricity consumption at SASOL

58 Situation awareness – vital to a sentient enterprise

61 The Human-Machine Interface

62 The high-performance HMI

67 Lonmin uses biometrics to secure SCADA access

70 Why is alarm management required in modern plants?

74 MES and the human factor

78 Human differentiator dictionary

80 Events: X-CHANGE 2013

84 Invensys Sentinel Services

86 Customer FIRST

87 2012/2013 Training Schedule (Johannesburg)

88 Use Protocol Magazine to generate business opportunities

90 On the lighter side

92 Protocol crossword #59

• Dr. Peter G Martin for the article about minimising time-to-experience and maximising performance

• Charles Mohrmann for the article on the resilient plant

• Simon Windust for the article titled: From labour worker to performance manager

• Stan DeVries for the article about why alarm management is required in modern plants

• Bill Hollifi eld for the article on the high-performance HMI

• Dr. Kobus van der Merwe of Industrial Management Enhancement for the article on MES and the human factor

MARCH/APRIL 2013

Contents


The human differentiator – beyond technology

If you think of all the technologies and their

benefi ts that surround us today, we humans

can be very proud of our achievements.

On the other hand, while computers may

crash or industrial accidents maim and kill,

to really screw things up takes a human (viz.

the global fi nancial meltdown, seven billion

people, global warming and two world wars

to name a few).

At the technology level, we mostly tend

to work with logical, fi nite devices and

processes which, although they might

be complex, are still our creations and

if something goes wrong, the fi x isn’t

far behind. When dealing with humans,

however, the tendency when something

goes wrong is to blame someone else or

walk away because fi xing humans has little to

do with logic and isn’t something we’re very

good at doing.

Industrial automation works because it

is based on rules, logic and procedures

which are followed to the letter by ...

machines. But leave the factory fl oor and

as you travel upward to the more ethereal

realms of the company, you will fi nd

that those same working principles fade

rather quickly to be replaced by opinions,

uncertainty as to what to do when

something goes wrong and quite a lot of

guesswork.

“You can’t treat people like machines!” I

hear you cry and, of course, you’re right. Yet

the machine world works so well, doesn’t

it? It creates wealth, it can be fi xed and it’s

predictable – even most of the breakdowns.

So why not extract the principles that work

so well on the shop fl oor and apply them

to the rest of the company? In fact, why not

make the entire company the “shop fl oor”

with structured processes ranging from

sales and accounting to resource planning

and production control? This would make

the company the machine and the people

the process controllers – and because

process principles would apply, personnel

would have a great deal more confi dence

because they would know what to do when

something goes wrong and there would

be no surprises as to who is responsible for

what. Welcome to the world of human-level

process control, ArchestrA Workfl ow and a

new company paradigm that frees humans

to do what they’re good at – creating new

things and improving old things while the

machine that is the company hums quietly

and productively in the background.

And it’s because of people’s creativity that

we can say that they are the company’s

greatest assets. Creative people think

outside the box – but what does that mean,

exactly? Ever seen one of those guys walking

down the street with a cell phone glued to

his ear, bumping into people or generally

getting in the way? Well, he’s thinking inside

the box. As long as that call lasts, he’ll have

a glazed look and he will be totally unaware

of where he is or that he is about to become

intimately familiar with the oily bits of a bus.

His situational awareness is next to zero and

his creativity is little more than that as he

focuses solely on winning a losing argument

with his wife.

Creative people are aware of the situations

in which they fi nd themselves and of the

environment that could affect that situation

from minute to minute. Because of all this,

they can make better decisions quicker

than anyone else. They analyse trends and

make contingency plans – they’re “on top”

of things. If companies focused on showing

employees the immense benefi ts of situation

awareness, they would not only empower

those employees to make better decisions

but the company itself would improve its

bottom line far quicker, better and cheaper

than with technological tweaks.

So, should mining and manufacturing

companies only hire people that show a high

degree of situation awareness? Perhaps the

job needs a robot in which case situation

awareness doesn’t come into the picture.

But if a human being is needed, it’s for some

very good reasons including the ability to

make good decisions based on analysing

information in the context of any given

situation – and, in industrial automation at

least, that calls for a high degree of situation

awareness, knowledge and experience.

Robots are excellent at what they do but

don’t ask them to do something else on the

spur of the moment or decide what to do if

something goes wrong. That’s what humans

are supposedly good at so you might as well

hire someone who’s very good at it.

At the end of the day, it’s humans that are

(should be) in control and it’s by improving

their abilities that the most dramatic

improvements can be made.

Until next time,

Denis du Buisson

[email protected]

Editor’s Notes


Mike le Plastrier, MD, Invensys Operations Management Southern Africa

We all know the complaints regarding skills

shortages and the outsourcing of jobs

offshore but this doesn’t have to be so.

South Africa may not be overpopulated

by rocket scientists (although we do

have some) but we’ve certainly got

human resources equal to the task of

handling many skilled jobs in the mining

and manufacturing industries – and it

doesn’t cost anything to fi nd and train

these valuable individuals because the

government foots the bill for everything.

Of course there is often signifi cant red

tape associated with these government

subsidies and this is probably one of the

reasons why more companies aren’t using

this golden opportunity – but we’ve got

around that by handling all the red tape,

accreditation, etc. for any company who

is interested. We’ve had to streamline

the process because EOH takes in 300

school-leavers and 300 graduates every

year as part of its job creation initiative so

we’ve created a team of people who are

well versed with all the intricacies of the

process, freeing the rest of us to do our

job of imparting knowledge.

Stop complaining, start training

Some statistics:

Unemployment in SA

• 5 million unemployed

• 4 million working age South Africans are

currently unemployed

• 14 million are economically inactive

• Youth are half of South Africa’s workforce

and make up nearly 75% of South Africa’s

unemployed – recipe for high future

unemployment and social instability

• 400 000 unemployed matriculants

• 600 000 unemployed university graduates

Government job creation funding (2011)

• R10 billion for job creation, small enterprise

development, and youth employment

• R9,5 billion to increase enrolment at FET

colleges and skills development

• R8,2 billion to improve school facilities

• R70 billion into the Expanded Public Works

Programme

• R9 billion National Treasury Jobs Fund to

create 150 000 jobs over the next 3 years

• R5 Billion is being used to introduce a youth

employment subsidy to create about 178 000

jobs

• National Skills Fund (NSF) – Education

Department received R41,1 billion of which

R9,6 billion are skills levies that go to the

Sector Education and Training Authorities

and the NSF

It’s important to note that these 600

students recognise that they have

been given a rare opportunity and as a

consequence, they show a high degree of

seriousness about not wasting it.

During their learnerships (school-leavers)

and internships (graduates), students

learn valuable practical skills, which, in our

case, focus on business IT and industrial

IT. This prepares them for the real world

and forms an important part of their CVs.

What’s more, having had their fi rst job,

they fi nd it a lot easier to fi nd another and

soon realise that education is the key to a

bigger pay cheque.

During the past fi nancial year, the EOH

group spent nearly R22 million on

skills development as we believe that

government alone cannot shoulder the

responsibility of job creation. Business has

the capacity and capability to do more and

unemployment poses a major business

risk. We are working with our top 300

customers and business partners to devise

ways and means of creating more jobs and

to develop and train young people. EOH

is also working with existing government

departments to mobilise existing and new

job creation initiatives.

Today, the novice’s journey to profi ciency

is certainly very different to what it used

to be and they need all the help they

can get. Many present-day control room

operators, for example, are mature

people who have come up through the

ranks and have had exposure to most

aspects of the shop fl oor which has given

them a depth of understanding of the

company’s production processes over the

decades they’ve been with the company.

But someone who today starts off as

a technician, say, rarely stays with the

company for decades and so tends to stick

in the technical fi eld with the result that he

most probably will not rise to the rank of

Stop complaining, start training


supervisor. The result is that operators are

trained for a career as operators.

That training starts with teaching them

about the processes they’ll be supervising

and what to do under various conditions.

But this is rarely good enough when

they actually have to control those same

processes for real. Like all of us, they can

make mistakes, some of which can have

serious safety or monetary consequences.

One reason for these mistakes is that

they simply don’t have the experience

necessary to deal with all the various

problems they’ll have to face. This is why I

believe that on-the- job simulator training

has become such an important issue.

Presently, there is no way that a pilot can

retain his commercial licence or switch

from one aircraft type to another without

many hours of simulator training. Yet, we

put people in charge of huge, expensive

plants and dangerous processes with a

smattering of academic education and the

fervent hope that they’ll cope.

It’s time that the mining and manufacturing

industries follow the lead of the aircraft

industry and start using simulators to

properly train their operational personnel

(at all levels). The petrochemical

industry has been doing just that for

years because of the hazardous nature

of their operations. Bringing simulator

training to the shop floor isn’t because

the plant is likely to explode or poison the

surrounding population (although that’s

not always strictly true) but because lack

of knowledge on how to handle situations

goes hand-in-hand with lack of production

due to unnecessary stoppages.

It’s not as if we don’t have the tools to do a

good job of educating our wealth-creating

personnel. From the Invensys stable alone

we have the suite of simulator solutions

from SimSci-Esscor which can simulate any

eventuality in any plant. Then there’s ArchestrA

Workflow that provides scripted scenarios

for responding to various situations while

IntelaTrac provides guidance and instructions

to mobile personnel on how to handle events

from routine maintenance to emergencies. Of

course there’s always software solutions such

as intelligent HMIs, trending tools, Statistical

Process Control, Artificial Intelligence Neural

Networks and others that have been designed

to mitigate surprises but none of these can

measure up to a well-informed, situation-aware

human when it comes to dealing with the

unexpected.

It’s quite predictable that simulator

training for industry will become the

norm rather than remain the exception.

The technology for this is nowhere as

complicated as flight simulation and has

become very cost-effective – especially

when compared to what can happen as a

result of decisions taken by ill-informed or

insufficiently-trained personnel.

So, what have we got? A government

with deep pockets that pays for all skills

training, a wealth of technologies and

expertise to provide some of the best

training in the world and the potential

of retaining much needed jobs in South

Africa. In my mind, there’s nothing much

left to complain about.


Human-level process control and ArchestrA WorkflowDenis du Buisson – Editor, Protocol Magazine

In the May-June 2011 issue of Protocol,

you were introduced to the concept of

SCADA-b, the application of process

principles to the entire company and at the

time, we briefly touched on how ArchestrA

Workflow contributed to this end. Now is

probably a good time to investigate this

further because after you’ve implemented

all the available technology and still find

your bottom line wanting, you’ll want to

know what comes next.

Memory refresh

As I’m sure you already know, the term

SCADA stands for Supervisory Control And

Data Acquisition – a well-known technology

used at the manufacturing or production

level to supervise and control processes

that would otherwise be too complex to

handle on a manual basis and in real-time.

I’m explaining this acronym because this

is intended to be read by all levels of

management and not only engineers.

In the real world, SCADA and MES are in

charge of the company’s wealth–creating

processes; it’s the heaviest of responsibilities

and they do it extremely well. So why not

use these same principles everywhere in

the company? While trying to see how this

could be done, I was struggling to come

up with a snappy name but the best I could

do was SCADA-b – SCADA at the business

level. I grew to like this unimaginative

name because it didn’t suggest yet another

mind-bending technology, it incorporated all

the proven process control principles to be

found in SCADA and it wasn’t a three-letter

acronym. Is SCADA-b the same as Business

Process Management? Very much so but it

explains it from an engineering and well-

understood angle.

I found that the benefits of adopting

these principles uniformly throughout the

company were impressive if not staggering.

Companies would have an unprecedented

degree of control and clarity that allows their

personnel to be more creative and effective

while their business, administrative and

information processes moved to a new and

purposeful level of reality. For the first time

I could see (and prove) why such things as

empowerment and delegation were not only

“nice-to-haves” but logically indispensable.

SCADA-b also showed the necessity (or not)

for performance improvement initiatives and

what Information Services (IS) should really

be doing.

Suddenly, SCADA-b glued everything

together and explained in a logical way

where all the thousands of applications,

approaches, standards and everything else

mining and manufacturing companies have

been exposed to for the past half a century

fitted.

Physicists have their unified field theory and

the article in the May-June 2011 issue of

Protocol was titled SCADA-b – the unified

firm theory because I think it’s high time that

all the bits and pieces of solutions available

were brought under a single, unifying

umbrella that showed where they were

needed and how they should collaborate

towards helping the company achieve its

business objectives.

About processes

If we’re going to have unified companies,

then it would be a good idea to have a

unifying principle; an approach that caters

for all eventualities at every level of the

company – and we find such a principle in

the concept of processes.

Process principles work with or without

our consent, so you don’t have to concern

yourself that this is yet another opinion-

based business religion created for the sole

purpose of enriching its creator – it would be

like trying to convince you that gravity is a

good idea (most of the time, it is).

If it wasn’t for process principles, we couldn’t

live more than a few minutes. The fact

that you’re reading this proves that your

metabolic processes are working – without

your consent or knowledge. And that’s a

good thing. If you contracted a virus and

your antibodies had to get your consent

before springing into action, you’d be dead

in minutes – far quicker than it would take

for you to have a board meeting in your

head as to what actions should be taken.

If the antibodies encounter difficulty, you

get a warning through increased body

temperature so that you can take the

appropriate medicine.

Process control on the shop floor works in a

similar way. PLCs do what they’re told to do

without resort to higher levels of control until

an alarm or unforeseen error occurs.

We can learn a lot from this. If you were

constantly busy monitoring and controlling

your bodily functions, you would have no

time for higher level processes such as

creative thinking. The same holds true for

a company. If the company’s sub-processes

can’t look after themselves, management

is constantly putting out fires rather than

thinking about new ventures, making the

most of business opportunities or improving

existing processes.

While most other disciplines can blame

someone or something else for non-

performance, engineers don’t have that

luxury. They have to make things work. That’s

why they’re hired and that’s why they, in turn,

have to adopt principles that will ensure an

income through the provision of working

results (usually within tight performance and

budget constraints). Buildings don’t stand

up because people think it’s a good idea

or television sets don’t work because of

Human-level process control and ArchestrA Workflow


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their price. It’s engineering principles that

have made our modern world a marvel of

technology.

But, when it comes to business processes,

what’s really improved? (let’s leave out the

computer thing because that’s just another

engineering milestone). The fact that

companies still show their structure in the

form of a hierarchical and position-based

organisation chart (never mind how “fl at”

the structure) goes to show that not much

has changed.

It’s important to note that processes apply

equally across the board and can involve

mechanical and human involvement. So

far, the term “process” – at least as far as

the mining and manufacturing industries

are concerned, has been mainly applied

to mechanical production methods. In

actual fact, these are the least troublesome

and least numerous of all the processes

in an enterprise. The most worrisome

are those that involve human interaction

and workfl ows because these are largely

unstructured. What to do when something

goes wrong? SCADA systems know

exactly what to do because they’ve been

programmed that way. Humans, on the other

hand, immediately call meetings that rarely

achieve anything other than to confi rm that

nobody’s really sure about what to do next

– meetings are usually directly proportional

to uncertainty and inversely proportional to

productivity.

The fact that companies could not operate

if they weren’t process-oriented (at whatever

unconscious or accidental level) seems to

rarely occur to anyone. That’s right. Your

company must already be process-based to

some degree otherwise you wouldn’t be in

operation. You wouldn’t be able to process

orders or manufacture anything if there

wasn’t a process in there somewhere (it’s

important not to confuse work fl ows – what

you do to get things done – with processes

of which work fl ows are only a part – see

later). What’s needed is to structure your

company consciously and with intent as

a real process-oriented and logical entity.

As soon as this happens, a lot of things

will fall into place and some things may go

away. The important thing is that you will

have a logical, dynamic and self-correcting

structure that isn’t the result of an accident,

coincidence or uninformed opinions

(informed opinions are something else

altogether).

The difference without and with such a

structure can be likened to alchemy and

chemistry. With alchemy, there’s random

and futile groping around for the elusive

philosopher’s stone whereas with chemistry,

there’s a precise science involved in getting

to a desired end-result (as well as an

explanation of why the philosopher’s stone

doesn’t exist – at least in this dimension).

With a ship, the captain lets engineering

and process principles run the engine

room as well as navigate the ship to its

chosen destination. But in a company, while

Figure 1: Immune system processes keep us alive yet we don’t even have to think about them because they’re on “automatic” leaving us free to be

creative. The same can apply to company processes.


the CEO will allow the same engineering

principles to govern his wealth-creating or

value-adding processes (e.g. the “engine

room” of the manufacturing plant), he

will turn to the business equivalent of

alchemy and uninformed opinions for

everything else – including the direction

the company is taking. This is quite scary

stuff and explains the random directions

companies often take in an attempt to

achieve changing and elusive business

objectives. Competitors can rarely do as

much damage.

How processes work

Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition

(SCADA) systems are part of an overall

structure called a Process.

A process is a series of controlled

and measurable actions that involves

feedback, learning mechanisms and

contingency plans to transform energy

and / or matter from one form into

another

So SCADA is the “controlled and

measurable” aspect of processes which

are made up of the following components

(figure 2):

1. An objective or desired end-result

2. A reason why achieving the objective is

desirable (without a good reason, what’s

the point?)

3. A list of operational requirements of

what has to be done to achieve the

objective

4. A list of performance specifications

against which performance and progress

can be measured

5. The workflow of actions necessary to

address the operational requirements

6. A Supervisory Control Mechanism

(SCM) - a computer and/or a person that

will monitor the workflow performance

against its specifications and which is

informed on how to correct malfunctions

and learn from them. The SCM must

have a high level of situation awareness

at all times.

7. A measurement facility that will

get the relevant data for the above

measurements (at the shop floor

level, this is a combination of PLCs

(Programmable Logic Controllers) and

one or more databases – historians

- while at the business level this could

include Information Services and their

access to relevant data repositories.

Measurements are done from the

output to the input (M1 to M5 in figure

2) because there’s no point in fixing

something that works.

The objective gives rise to a set of

operational and performance requirements

Figure 2: Example of a process at the shop floor level

Figure 3: Example of a company process


that must be in place to achieve it. The

operational requirements result in a series

of tasks known as a workflow while the

performance requirements specify time,

quantity and quality targets for the tasks.

The Supervisory Control Mechanism or SCM

(with business processes, this is usually a

manager), monitors the performance of the

process at each measuring point and checks

this against the performance specification

for that task. If the performance is not “up

to spec”, then the workflow needs to be

adjusted accordingly. If the workflow is

continuously achieving its objective, then the

SCM can set the sights a little higher with

more aggressive KPIs. This is what makes

processes dynamic, adaptive to change

and capable of continuous and incremental

improvement.

Each sub-process becomes a whole process

in its own right at a lower and more detailed

level. In this way, level 1 could give the

“big picture” for the company while level

3 or 4, say, could show detailed selling or

manufacturing processes. But the same

rules hold throughout and it’s easy to show

the necessity for detailed processes since

they are the natural evolution of higher

level requirements. This provides total

visibility throughout the company and lets

people see exactly to what degree they are

contributing.

Human-level workflow management

So far, we’ve seen how process principles

can be uniformly applied at any company

level but we’ve only been concerned

with the monitoring and measurement

of “mechanical” workflows or collections

of tasks during normal operations. What

happens when something goes wrong?

Maybe a SCM didn’t properly manage

the task for which he/she is responsible or

perhaps there’s been a machine malfunction

or an accident. By then, it’s probably too

late to think of something and that’s why

it’s important to script contingency plans

that can be enforced using proven process

control principles.

The armed forces never start an operation

without detailed contingency plans.

The raid on bin Laden’s compound in

Abbottabad on 2nd May 2011 is a good

example. Even though one of the Blackhawk

helicopters damaged its tail rotor and

made a controlled crash landing inside the

compound because of a condition known

as a vortex ring state (where the helicopter

descends into its own downwash), the

Figure 4: The extent of ArchestrA Workflow in a manufacturing process model. The software

monitors the interaction between the SCMs of the various physical processes rather than the

processes themselves which are monitored by devices such as PLCs (figure 2).

operation went ahead without hesitation

because this had been catered for. Two

Chinook helicopters were on standby for just

such an eventuality and also for refuelling

(even more Chinooks were on standby with

additional SEAL reinforcements but were

not needed). The raid was scheduled to

take 40 minutes – it actually took 38, in spite

of things not going quite as intended. This

is the result of contingency planning and

everyone knowing what to do if something

goes wrong.

ArchestrA Workflow facilitates the structured

monitoring of actions during normal and

abnormal situations by using process

control principles at the human interaction

level. This allows the right people to be

involved and provides for the organised

escalation of responses. Such organisation

also means that best practices are retained

and continuously refined with regard to the

resolution of issues.

Empowerment and management in a company process model

As we’ve already seen, the role of the SCM

is to make the process achieve its objective

through control. Figure 5 shows three

levels of processes and, although only one

sub-process is shown expanded at each

level, imagine that all the sub-processes

were expanded to the next lower level. This

would leave the SCMs at level 3 with the full

responsibility of making things go right. In

other words, the SCM at level 2 would really

only be monitoring the inputs and outputs

of the level 3 processes – and since these

would be self-correcting, the job of the level

2 SCM could rapidly become quite boring

if not redundant – let alone the role of the

level 1 SCM.

That’s why, in a process model,

empowerment has to increasingly go to

the lowest level while the role of traditional

management (SCMs) decreases at higher

levels. From this we learn that:

• The lowest level (and most important)

SCM is Fred on the factory floor. He,

with his lathe, smelter or soldering iron is

responsible for doing what the company

was created for in the first place. He adds

the value and creates the wealth and if

any top management reading this thinks

Human-level process control and ArchestrA Workflow


that wealth is created elsewhere, then fire

all your Freds and see what happens in a

couple of days.

• In the business context, management is

the SCM

• Management is a function, not a

position. This is good news for everyone

except the empire builders whose only

reason for staying in their position is that

they have one. With traditional structures,

senior management has the leverage to

make those weighty decisions but are

they actually qualified? It’s the staff (all the

Freds) who know what’s really going on.

The process model puts all this in a logical

perspective by replacing the management

position with the SCM function. This

leaves “managers” with experience time

to improve their processes and to realise

their worth.

• It would appear that upper and middle

management will have little or nothing to

do because of empowerment at the lower

levels

This last point could be quite disquieting

if you’re a CEO because it probably takes

the “passing of the buck” thing too far for

your liking. Business consultants, however,

have been talking about empowerment and

delegation for long enough so this shouldn’t

come as a surprise. What should come as a

surprise (even to the business consultants)

is that they were right and the process

structure tells them why.

So, is there the necessity for middle and

top management and, if so, what should

they be doing? Of course there is and their

role is a vital one. They have the same job

as lower level SCMs in making sure that

their processes are on track and, because

they won’t be putting out fires any more,

they have more time to do what they were

supposed to do all along – improving their

processes. This means everything from

designing better products and streamlining

the supply chain to optimising inventory and

improving proactive maintenance – all the

time and with no distraction. This is what

humans are good at, so let the rest of the

self-correcting wealth-creating machinery

that SCADA-b allows your business to

become, give them the time they need to

excel rather than standing still with a fire

extinguisher just in case.

Conclusion

Structuring your entire company into an

efficient process and sub-processes isn’t

going to happen overnight but it can be

achieved bit by bit – especially by adopting

Figure 5: Empowerment and management in a process model

solutions like Business Process Management

principles and ArchestrA Workflow software.

All the way through this exercise, you’ll have

the certainty you’re doing the right thing

because the very heart of your company,

your wealth-creating processes, are using

the very same approach.

But automating mechanical processes is one

thing – automating human-level processes

is something else altogether. Change is

almost always seen as threatening rather

than exciting – especially by those people

who would rather not have their private

agendas exposed by the logic and visibility

of enterprise-wide process principles. Others

may feel that this will simply be another

imposition of management control – which

is completely wrong because that would

defeat the object of the exercise.

The objective of structuring your company

on process principles is to build an efficient,

responsive and well-oiled machine that

can deal with contingencies routinely

and in real-time. This would give the

“machine operators” (your staff) not

only the guidance and confidence they

probably lack today but it will also show

them the level of their contributions and

provide a logical rather than opinion-based

foundation for recognition and rewards. But

mostly, it will free them to do what humans

are good at; originating new ideas for

improvement.

Wonderware has proved the wisdom

of the bottoms-up approach for driving

reality-based information throughout the

enterprise. Well, structuring your company

on process principles is going to need a

top-down approach that can only succeed

with the commitment and dedication of top

management and the understanding and

acceptance of the entire staff.

So, is this the “final frontier” of

manufacturing excellence? Probably not

but it’s definitely one of the big ones we’re

going to have to face on the way.


Product profile: ArchestrA Workflow Software

Enable true collaboration

In today’s business environment, companies

are faced with many challenging demands:

• Responding to market dynamics

• Driving higher levels of quality and

consistency

• Managing compliance and regulation

• Coordinating with suppliers and vendors

• Reducing operating costs

• Managing global operations

These ever-changing demands are forcing

companies to evaluate and improve

their business processes across their

organisation.

ArchestrA® Workflow software is an

advanced workflow application that enables

companies to digitise manual and automated

processes that include people and/or

systems. This sophisticated Business Process

Management (BPM) application enables

companies to Model, Execute, Analyse and

Improve processes inside and outside of

their organisation to drive higher levels of

collaboration, productivity and innovation.

With ArchestrA Workflow, companies can

institutionalise work processes that manage

normal, unscheduled or disruptive events

within their operations environment. This

industrial workflow application benefits

operations, maintenance, engineering,

quality, environmental and safety

departments within an organisation by:

• Increasing productivity. Automating

manual processes and best practices,

eliminating manual error-prone

procedures, effectively coordinating

people and systems to accomplish a

simple or complex task

• Providing ownership-driven innovation.

Employing a model-driven approach

Product profile - ArchestrA Workflow Software


that empowers non-IT users to visually

compose processes, monitor and measure

the performance of processes, change

and adapt processes.

• Enabling knowledge management.

Digitising Standard Operating Procedures

(SOPs), Good Manufacturing Practices

(GMPs) and work instructions to ensure

that company policies and procedures

are being executed in a consistent and

compliant manner.

Workflow-enabled applications

Work processes span across many different

domains within a typical operating company.

These processes may include:

• Production related activities

• Maintenance related activities

• Quality related activities environmental

and safety related activities

• Lean related activities

Many of these processes are embedded

in commercial off-the-shelf applications

and custom applications. People-driven

processes are generally employed to fill

the “white space” that exists between

the applications. This landscape creates a

significant obstacle that organisations need

to overcome in an effort to drive higher

In a nutshell ...

ArchestrA Workflow is the systematic

collaboration tool you need for

modelling, executing, measuring and

adapting work processes within your

global enterprise. The software will

enable you to:

• Standardise, visualise and track

processes across all domains within

your organisation

• Digitise SOPs, GMPs and work

instructions

• Coordinate human-centric and

system-centric tasks

• Support comprehensive compliance

management and audit trails

• Synchronise with supply chain

and other plant floor/enterprise

applications

Business value

• Increase process agility

• Optimise resource utilisation

• Facilitate innovation

• Increase end-user ownership

• Manage process-related intellectual

property

• Maximise productivity

• Reduce operational costs

• Enable knowledge management

“BPM is an approach to improving business processes that helps organisations cope with frequent process change by making processes explicit and visible, by using highly agile and iterative methods and empowering business stakeholders to make changes to the underlying solutions supporting business processes.”

www.Gartner.com, Hype Cycle for Business Process Management, 2009


levels of productivity and innovation.

ArchestrA Workflow has been designed

to seamlessly collaborate with existing

hardware and software assets to enable

organisations to Model, Execute, and

Analyse processes that require humans and

applications to be coordinated effectively

to accomplish specific business objectives.

Let’s take a look at how ArchestrA Workflow

can add value to your existing application

landscape.

HMI applications

• Operator Alarm Response Management:

Guide operators through a series of actions

to resolve a particular alarm condition. If

necessary, collaborate with other resources

or escalate to a supervisor to assist in

resolving the alarm condition.

• Electronic Work Instructions: Guide

operators through standardised and

validated processes that have been

established by the organization for

common activities such as machine setup,

line shutdown, plant start-up, product

changeover, material staging, etc.

• Model-Driven HMI Logic: Leverage the

visual modelling capability to eliminate

custom script used for defining process,

machine or line control logic at the

supervisory level.

MES applications

• Specification Change Management:

When a specification change has been

requested by a user, the system would

submit the request to the appropriate

resources (e.g. Operations, Process

Engineering), enforce the decision making

process, communicate the decision back

to the stakeholders, and update the

appropriate specification management

applications (e.g. PLM and MES).

• Positive QA Release: After a production

order or lot has been completed, the

system would compile data from the

appropriate data sources, highlight

information that is out-of-spec or requires

resolution, and coordinate any reviews

or additional actions required for the

selected disposition (e.g. release to

distribution, hold for QA review).

• QA Hold Resolution: After a QA hold

has been issued against material by an

operator, the system would coordinate the

appropriate resources (e.g. QA, Operations)

to review the issue, as well as coordinate

any reviews or additional actions required

for the selected disposition (e.g. remove

hold, return to vendor).

• LIMS Integration: When a laboratory

sample is required for a particular process,

the system would prompt the operator for

the sample, collect the sample data, send

the sample data to the LIMS application,

receive the sample results from the LIMS

application, and coordinate any additional

actions required based on the sample

results (e.g. continue batch, place batch

on hold, change batch parameters).

• Model-Driven Business Rule

Management: Leverage the visual

modelling capability of ArchestrA

Workflow to eliminate the custom script

or code used for defining classic MES

business rules.

ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) applications

• Material Receiving and Inspection:

When raw materials are received by a

customer, the system would enforce the

QA sampling plan defined for the product

and vendor, highlight information that is

out-of-spec or requires resolution, and

coordinate any reviews or additional

actions required to complete the

receiving and inspection process prior

to submitting the information to the ERP

application.

• Master Data Approval: When master

data is changed in the ERP application,

the system would coordinate the

appropriate resources (e.g. QA, Process

Engineering) to review the change,

potentially capture additional information

required to make the change at the plant

(e.g. effective date, qualified production

lines), enforce the plant-level signoff

process, and update the appropriate

applications (e.g. LIMS, MES, Quality) on

the plant floor.

• Production Order Download

Synchronisation: When bulk production

orders are downloaded to the plants

within an enterprise, the system would

apply plant specific business rules

to break down the bulk orders into

manufacturing orders that look at the

capacity constraints of a particular plant.

• Production Order Reconciliation: When

production orders have been completed

on the plant floor, the system would

compile of all the production records

associated with the order (e.g. production,

consumption, labour records) from the

MES application, coordinate the resources

required to review the production

records (e.g. Production Supervisor, Shift

Supervisor), highlight inconsistencies

with the data, capture any changes made

to the data, and send the reconciled

information to the ERP application.

Comprehensive cash flow management with accounts payable



Key features of ArchestrA Workflow

ArchestrA Workflow software provides

a collaboration framework that enables

end users to create composite workflows

that include Invensys applications, as

well as other third party or custom

applications.

Workflows can be modelled at all levels

(1, 2 and 3) and, depending upon the

required degree of sophistication, some

workflows may span across multiple levels.

The ArchestrA Workflow process design

and workflow task execution components

are seamlessly embedded into the InFusion

Enterprise Control System applications.

These components may also be embedded

into third party commercial applications or

custom applications.

Process Designer

• Intuitive, visual modelling environment for

easy process design

• Over 50 out-of-the-box configurable

workflow activities

• Processes can be designed and imported

from Microsoft® Visio

• Workflow actions secured through

itemised security features

• Supports complex branching and decision

trees

• BPMN (Business Process Modelling

Notation) compliant

Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) and KPIs

• Out-of-the-box activity reporting and

activity monitoring views

• Associate workflows with BAM events

• Customisable Key Performance Indicators

(KPIs)

• Standard out-of-the-box performance

analysis

• Visibility to workflow instances and

genealogy

ArchestrA Workflow has gone mobile!

ArchestrA Workflow’s new Mobile Client allows

you to manage your Work Task via an iPhone

or iPad.

• Update tasks anywhere, anytime

• Receive new task notifications

• Approve or Reject a task

• Flag a task based on importance

• Fill out a form

• Proactive alerts of business exceptions

and KPIs

Forms Designer

• Model complex forms to collect and/or

visualise data at a particular step in the

process

• WYSIWYG editor enables end users to

create new forms or maintain existing

forms

• Forms can be linked to, or initiate,

workflows

• Multiple forms can be associated with a

particular workflow

• Scripting is available to perform more

advanced tasks

• Security can be applied to different fields

on the form

• Supports use of Microsoft InfoPath®

forms

Communication Channels

• Comprehensive Microsoft Outlook

integration support for two-way

communication on mobile phones

• Supports web, PDA, email, voice and IM

for task delivery and response


• Extensive APIs and web services support

ArchestrA Workflow connectors and accelerators

ArchestrA System Platform

• Provides configurable read/write and

wait-for-event workflow activities for

Application Server integration

• Provides access to Enterprise Console

from Wonderware® Information Server

• Extends standard objects in ArchestrA IDE

with a workflow tab to configure workflow

events

• Enables Wonderware Historian events to

invoke workflows

• Provides ArchestrA graphic templates for

task delivery and response

• View and respond to workflow tasks in

Combine paperless processing and workflow technology

InTouch® for System Platform

Wonderware MES Connector

� Provides configurable workflow activity

to transact with Wonderware MES

middleware

� Enables MES middleware extensibility

hooks to invoke workflows

� Provides configurable workflow activity

to retrieve data from the Wonderware

MES database

Wonderware IntelaTrac Connector

• Provides configurable IntelaTrac Action to

invoke workflows

• Provides configurable workflow activity to

invoke IntelaTrac web services

• Provides configurable wait-for-event

workflow activity for IntelaTrac procedures

• Provides configurable workflow activity to

retrieve data from the IntelaTrac database

SAP Connector

• Provides configurable workflow activity

that reads/writes information from / to

SAP

• Exchanges data with SAP using standard

RFCs/BAPIs

BizTalk Connector

• Invokes workflows from BizTalk

orchestrations for human workflow

integration

• Invokes BizTalk orchestrations from

workflows for advanced system

integration



SharePoint Accelerator

• Provides advanced workflow capability

that seamlessly integrates SharePoint with

your manufacturing processes

• Integrates with SharePoint database

• Delivers tasks to SharePoint lists

• Allows initiation of workflows from

document libraries, lists and content types

Offers a rich set of SharePoint Actions that

inherit and manipulate SharePoint metadata

during a workflow process

Databases supported

• SQL Server Versions

• MS SQL Server 2005 Standard - SP3

• MS SQL Server 2005 Enterprise - SP3

• MS SQL Server 2008 Standard - SP1

• MS SQL Server 2008 Enterprise - SP1

Both 32 and 64 bit systems are supported

Operating systems supported

• Windows Server 2003 Standard

• Windows Server 2003 Enterprise

• Windows 2008 Server Standard

• Windows 2008 Server Enterprise

• Windows 2008 Server R:2 Standard

• Windows 2008 Server R:2 Enterprise

Both 32 and 64 bit systems are supported

Microsoft Internet Explorer versions supported

• IE 7.0

• IE 8.0

Extensions provided

ArchestrA Workflow Software builds on WCF

/ SOA / Web Service and .NET technology

as an extension to the existing suite of

Invensys Operations Management products.

ArchestrA Workflow Software provides

extensions to:

• Wonderware Application Server

• Wonderware Intelligence

• Wonderware Historian Server

• Wonderware InTouch for System Platform

• Wonderware Information Server

• Wonderware MES 4.0/ Operations and

Performance Software

• Wonderware IntelaTrac

ArchestrA Workflow enables organisational best practices

ArchestrA Workflow Software is a

comprehensive workflow solution for

manufacturers that allows organisations

to build specific business processes that

help in monitoring key business activities.

Whether it is for regulatory compliance, or

best practice sharing, or to enhance other

systems of record (Manufacturing Execution

Systems; Enterprise Manufacturing

Intelligence; Enterprise Asset Management;

Enterprise Resource Planning), ArchestrA

Workflow provides collaboration, visibility

and process enforcement.

Involve ArchestrA Workflow from within BizTalk for

human workflow services

Enhance the native functionality of SharePoint


Why should you consider ArchestrA Workflow Software?

Introduction

We first of all have to clear up some possible

confusion. In this magazine and other places,

you will see BPM intimately linked with

ArchestrA Workflow and you may correctly

think that you can’t remember when you and

Wonderware were last seen to be involved

with business processes. Our software warns

you when the boiler’s going to blow and you

go and do something about it. It’s been a

great relationship and hopefully one we can

continue to nurture.

The truth of the matter is that any process

in a manufacturing or mining enterprise is a

business process because any and all such

processes are there for the success of the

business. And so BPM came to include any

activity. But we’ve come to associate business

with ERP and almost everything else with

production (SCADA, MES, EMI, etc.).

The REAL truth of the matter is that your

entire company is run by processes. ERP,

MES, etc. are only tools designed to provide

information in such a way that the process

owners (managers) can run the company

efficiently and profitably. But who oversees

the process owners and everybody that

makes it all happen? Who provides the

guidance when things go wrong?

So BPM isn’t just about business

processes. It’s mainly about the

coordination of human effort in any

process or interlinked groups of processes.

It could just as well as being tagged as

Human-Level Process Management but

that’s quite a mouthful.

Cutting to the chase, ArchestrA Workflow

coordinates human-level processes as well

as their physical counterparts so that they

work in harmony within a unified monitoring

and control structure.

In Aberdeen Group’s 2009 benchmark study

on Manufacturing Operations Management

(MOM), BPM adoption was one of several IT

tools and standards to be examined. It turned

out that BPM was both one of the most

widely-adopted tools and one deemed to

deliver the most value, with Best-in-Class

manufacturers being almost three times as

likely as Laggards to have adopted BPM.

The reason BPM tools are delivering so

much value to manufacturers is closely

related to the problems that BPM solves by

leveraging human intellectual property and

IT and standards used to support Manufacturing Operations Management (Source: Aberdeen Group 2009

Why should you consider ArchestrA Workflow Software?


putting humans squarely in control of the

processes for which they are responsible.

How does ArchestrA Workflow differ from traditional business process mapping applications?

While a process map stuck on a wall lets

you see the relationships between various

activities, that’s where it stops. It’s like

pinning a P&ID up in your office and thinking

that it represents what’s actually going on in

the plant. It’s only a map of what the system

looks like. It can’t tell you what the system

is doing. For that to happen, the P&ID

needs to be represented in a HMI which

is connected via PLCs to real-time sensors

that measure the real and physical process.

Only then can the P&ID become “live”,

show you what’s going on, measure system

performance and let you control the process

being monitored.

In this way, ArchestrA Workflow is to

human-level processes what SCADA is to

mechanical processes. Although process

definition starts with a map (in the same way

as a P&ID), measurements and feedback

as well as the issuing of guidance and

instructions is all done in real-time – the

same as with a SCADA system.

Where is ArchestrA Workflow likely to be

most useful in your company?

The most immediate application areas for

ArchestrA Workflow are probably in those

areas where automation leaves off and

manual operations take over such as:

• Manual task tracking

• Monitoring Six Sigma activities

• Handling contingencies (e.g. abnormal

alarms, unforeseen events, etc.)

• Monitoring inspections and quality control

activities

• Preventing tasks being started without

proper authorisation (e.g. a batch without

approved LIMS input)

• Product sampling (e.g. non-automated

LIMS)

• Batch pre-weighing

• Logging maintenance procedures and

providing guidance to procedures

• Interacting with the mobile workforce (e.g.

via IntelaTrac)

• Capturing and applying best practices

• Linking currently disconnected processes

to promote collaboration

• Coordinating security

Depending on whether you’re an end user

or system integrator, you will benefit from

ArchestrA Workflow in different ways –

perhaps surprisingly to some, it would seem

that ArchestrA Workflow is most beneficial to

... but you’ll have to read on to find out:

ArchestrA Workflow benefits if you’re an end-user

• Enterprise unification – Enterprise

processes are all interconnected and they

must all share and conform to higher and

cross-level objectives and requirements

otherwise they would be rogue and

detrimental. So BPM provides the “glue”

and reality for enterprise unification.

• Consistent application of best practices

– Once a process based on best practices

and captured intellectual property has

been defined, its application is consistent

and independent of various owners and

operators.

• Defined operating environment – Under

normal circumstances, no more guesswork

and endless meetings as to what to do

when something goes wrong. When

something abnormal occurs, its solution

is documented and becomes normal

operating procedure next time around.

• Staff confidence and consideration –

Staff have prescribed guidance as to what

to do given any number of recognised

circumstances. They also know precisely

what’s going to happen when they

don’t know what to do because that’s

simply another defined process (but not

necessarily their responsibility although it

will require their involvement).

• Defined responsibilities – Process owners

are solely responsible for making sure

their processes meet set performance

criteria and to correct them if they don’t.

• Improved collaboration – Processes

have defined inputs and outputs and so

helping their owners understand their

relationship to other staff members and

their needs in other processes promotes a

new level of cooperation.

• Improved efficiency and response

time – Because the actions needed to

be taken to handle abnormalities are

scripted, virtually no time is lost in endless

meetings and normal operation can be

restored very quickly. If the corrective

action taken repeatedly fails to correct the

situation, then a script can be developed

to handle that situation too. Of course

every case is going to be different and has

to be judged on its merits but the process

of arriving at a solution will almost always

be the same.

• Improved responsiveness to market

demands – For example, the company’s

objectives may need to change if

faced with insurmountable competitive

challenges. This is rather drastic and

changing a company’s objectives without

good reasons can be disastrous. But

there are certain conditions when this

may become necessary. What are those

conditions? How are new objectives

defined and once they have been

changed, what follows? BPM forces the

discipline of thinking things through in

order to minimise surprises later.

• Important change in the perspective

of staff towards the business – True

business process ownership means that

process owners (everyone in the company

at whatever level they are) recognise their

role and contribution towards achieving

the company’s business objectives.

To that degree, they adopt a sense of

responsibility that isn’t possible with

traditional approaches.

• Quick and significant results – You and

your company have probably spent a

great deal of time and money trying to

improve production efficiency in order

to get a corresponding improvement of

your bottom line. There’s nothing wrong


with that and it’s part of the deal for

continuous incremental improvement.

Doing so, however, leverages

technologies and approaches whose

incremental contribution and focus may

be decreasing as you approach a certain

ideal result for a given level of production

and circumstances. Leveraging human

intellectual property and ingenuity, on

the other hand, unleashes potential that

you probably thought you never had and

results in true, collective origination that is

not only attuned to your exact needs but

that can probably outstrip any other form

of technology-based contribution.

• Continuous incremental improvement

– Process rules are the basis for this

because it doesn’t naturally happen

any other way. The rules are really quite

simple: If something is wrong, fix it and

learn. If something is right, improve it

(because there’s nothing else to be done).

• Measurement and control – if you

can’t measure it, you can’t control it. By

transforming business workflows into

business processes, management can

measure and control their effectiveness.

• Time to think – Business processes are

like manufacturing processes. If they’re

running correctly, it gives their managers

time to think on how they could be

improved.

ArchestrA Workflow benefits if you’re a System Integrator

As a solution supplier in the high-tech field

of industrial automation and enterprise IT,

you can greatly improve the effectiveness

of your business if the process of problem

investigation, design, project management,

implementation, testing and deployment

can be made more predictable and

controllable. This is not only beneficial to

you but also to your customers. In fact, by

adopting BPM, you will enjoy all the above

benefits in addition to the following:

Broaden your business landscape

considerably – Adding ArchestrA Workflow

to your list of offerings will give you the

opportunity of integrating your domain

knowledge to more areas of your customers’

businesses. For example, if you’re currently

specialising in SCADA installations (e.g.

InTouch) with say, food manufacturers, you

already have an intimate knowledge of how

processes work in that industry. It’s this same

knowledge that will help you implement BPM

solutions elsewhere in these companies.

You may have noticed that, over the last

few years, the role of SCADA historians

has changed somewhat and they are now

responsible for far more information than

their original mandate. That’s because

your customers don’t just do SCADA.

They also do MES, EMI, ERP, etc. and the

information in shop floor historians is a vital

link to how the company is performing. So,

although you may think that you’re not really

interested in these other application areas,

you’re already involved with them directly

or indirectly – like it or not. So why not

like it? Who better to spread the concept

and implementation of business process

management than process control specialists

like you? Granted, the processes to be

controlled will have humans and workflows

rather than PLCs, pumps, valves and sensors

but the principle of process management

remains the same and you already know all

about that.

The alternative to diversification is to wait

until your customers need an upgrade to

their SCADA systems – that could be five

to ten years away. What will you do in the

meantime? The only block between jumping

from SCADA to BPM is a mental one. You

know what your customers need and you

also know that they’d rather get it from you

than anyone else because they trust you to

make things work for them. And, although

you may not yet be aware of it, you also

know how to use ArchestrA Workflow to your

advantage. It would be interesting to know

who’s better qualified to provide the solution

that your customers have been looking

forward to for so many years.

Become more valuable by adding value

from a different point of view – It’s often

difficult for your customers, as the saying

goes, to see the wood for the trees. As

an outsider, you can add value to your

customers’ processes by viewing them

from an objective viewpoint that will not be

biased by years of “that’s the way we’ve

always done it”. That’s worth far more

than you may think – and don’t forget that

your customers are also reading this and

know the value that you can add to their

bottom lines if you will only give yourself the

permission to do so.

Conclusion

So who will benefit most from ArchestrA

Workflow? It’s your customers of course!

Whether you’re an end user or system

integrator, you will win the confidence and

retain the loyalty of customers through

reliable and excellent service – and you’ll

be able to do so with confidence, greatly

improved predictability and improved

profitability.

Contents


Plant Engineering names ArchestrA Workflow software from Invensys a Product of the Year

Collaboration across business and

production applications recognized for

operational excellence in reader survey

In March 2012, ArchestrA Workflow software

won the Gold Award in the Productivity

Training Software category of Plant

Engineering magazine’s annual Product of

the Year contest.

Winners of the contest were selected by the

magazine’s readers, comprising engineers

from leading global manufacturing

organisations who buy, specify and use the

products every day. The magazine’s panel

of industry experts nominated finalists from

hundreds of entries, after which readers

selected the winners in more than a dozen

plant and manufacturing product categories.

“Worker collaboration is a major challenge

for today’s manufacturing managers and

engineers, especially as an aging plant

workforce contemplates retirement,” said

Bob Vavra, editor and content manager,

Plant Engineering. “Hiring and training

new employees, as well as retaining their

knowledge and expertise, continues to

be a critical function. Workflow tools

can be of great help because they can

enforce standard operating procedures

and appropriate incident response. Our

readers have identified the products they

feel will help them run their plants more

efficiently, and on their behalf, we’re happy

to recognise Invensys with this year’s Product

of the Year award.”

ArchestrA Workflow software is an advanced

workflow application that captures and

enforces operational processes across

multiple plant domains, including

operations, maintenance, quality and

engineering. The software synchronises

human and system activity by enforcing

standard operating procedures, as well as

standard responses to abnormal events,

such as downtime, quality breaches or yield

decreases. ArchestrA Workflow software

can be embedded in the overall automation

system configuration, readily equipping

users to configure the operational workflow

activities of people, systems and equipment.

In addition, the software can extend other

manufacturing and business applications,

enabling new collaboration capabilities.

Now supporting Invensys Operations

Management’s IntelaTrac mobile workforce

solution, for example, ArchestrA Workflow

software allows workers on maintenance

rounds to adhere to established procedures,

report and respond to abnormal process or

machine events and take approved remedial

actions.

“Driving collaboration across all your

resources by streamlining workflow is the

new frontier for achieving operational

excellence in industrial automation,” said

Tom Troy, director, operations and execution

portfolio, Invensys Operations Management.

“ArchestrA Workflow software readily equips

users to configure the operational workflow

activities of people, systems and equipment

as an integral part of the automation system

configuration. And its embedded approach

enables new collaboration, standardisation

and cross-enterprise visibility for processes

that have typically been isolated or

addressed on an ad-hoc basis.”


The clearest path to modernisation.

Secure your future with Foxboro and Triconex

Bypass the risk and cost of obsolescence through our unique and

comprehensive approach. To start mapping out your path,

visit us at iom.invensys.com/Modernise.


© Copyright 2012. All rights reserved. Invensys, the Invensys logo, Avantis, Eurotherm, Foxboro, IMServ, InFusion, Skelta, SimSci-Esscor, Triconex and Wonderware are trademarks of Invensys plc, its subsidiaries or af�liates. All other brands and product names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Real Collaboration. Real-Time Results.TM

INV-347 Modern2-GenericA4.indd 1 9/10/12 1:57 PM

0800 INVENSYS | [email protected] | iom.invensys.co.za


Workforce empowermentThere’s no doubt that a capable workforce can adapt to changing circumstances

a great deal faster than programmed process responses and that human training

can often yield faster and more dramatic results than investments in technology.

Today, the drive is to increase situational awareness through simulator training and

other initiatives that help production and other personnel excel and to bring their

expertise and knowledge to the forefront of operations.


The resilient plant: The truth about building capabilities for workforce enablementCharles Mohrmann, Product Marketing & Strategy Director, Invensys

Introduction

According to a recent ARC Advisory Group

study, “Why We Need a Better Approach

to Procedural Automation”, it was reported

that operator error is the leading cause

of significant plant incidents. In process

industries, these incidents account for the

highest dollar loss per incident resulting

in 42% of unscheduled plant shutdowns.

Recently, a major oil company paid:

• $15M in fines to the U.S. Environmental

Protection Agency (EPA) as part of a

consent decree

• $51M in fines to the U.S. Occupational

Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)

related to one facility

• $20B in escrow to the U.S. government to

cover potential costs of an oil spill

Is this an exception? Hardly. A recent J & H

Marsh & McLennan report documents the

average cost per major incident related to

operator error exceeds $80M. The Chemical

Safety Topical Committee, sponsored by

the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE),

findings reveal there is one chemical

incident per day, on average, in the U.S.

These incidents have an estimated cost of

over $2 million per incident to comply with

the Occurrence Reporting and Processing

System (ORPS) which is required by the

DOE’s Office of Health, Safety and Security

(HSS). This ORPS cost does not take into

account other direct or indirect costs such

as repairing equipment/facilities, employee

injuries, revising procedures, increased

training, work slowdowns, stoppages during

accident investigations, corrective action

implementations and others.

There has to be a better way … and

there is. This white paper looks at the

issues facing process industries today and

presents a strategy framework that can

yield step-change process improvements

to your operational excellence objectives

The resilient plant: The truth about building capabilities for workforce enablement


and can help you achieve true Workforce

Enablement.

Why is achieving world-class workforce enablement so difficult?

The problem is compounded by aging

workforces and the need to assimilate

new workers faster. The problem is further

exacerbated by an ongoing deluge of

new regulations creating an operating

environment which did not exist the previous

year. Traditional training alone can no longer

overcome this aging workforce/regulatory

compliance crossfire. All organisations train

their people and most spend significant

money doing so. 90% of the respondents

to the July 2010 McKinsey Quarterly survey

said building capabilities was a Top 10

priority for their organisations. In addition,

the study stated only 25% of the companies

surveyed said that their training programmes

were effective at improving performance

measurably and only 8% percent track a

programme’s return on investment (ROI). Do

these situations sound familiar?

Here are what major companies have stated

during interviews with Invensys:

• “Our traditional training was moved out

of the actual job context and moved to

less and less real situations.”

• “Our experts were removed from

working with novices. For most roles in

manufacturing environments there are

very few situations where the experts in

our organisation can spend time coaching

and mentoring others.”

• “There is very little post-training support;

most of it is limited to manuals.”

Many organisations have no idea whether

or not they are getting real business value

from their training investments. Companies

typically measure training impact by

conducting surveys of attendees or counting

how many employees complete courses

rather than assessing whether or not those

employees learned anything that improved

business performance. We therefore have

to ask:

Has anything really changed much in training

over the past 20-30 years? Cell phones

are now a necessity, the Internet is vital to

daily business and increasingly technology

advances that drive real-time decision-

making are becoming critical factors in

operating manufacturing and industrial

facilities. Considering how dramatically

and rapidly the technology landscape has

evolved in only the past decade, it is worth

time questioning the status quo:

• When industry experts estimate it takes

10,000 hours to develop an employee’s

expertise, what can you do differently to

reduce the learning curve?

• When 30% of plant managers switch sites

and/or companies annually, how can you

best sustain a safety culture?

The McKinsey Quarterly report also noted

that it is imperative senior executives not

only understand these training issue trends

but think strategically about how to adapt


management and organisational structures

to meet these new demands. The report

emphasises that training programmes

generate greater value for organisations

when the curricula reflect key business

performance metrics (e.g., testing real-world

outcomes is crucial).

Workforce enablement defined

Workforce Enablement encompasses

many areas of plant operations, both

inside and outside the control room (board

operators, field operators, maintenance,

EHS personnel, etc.). It is recognised as one

of the foremost contributors to bottom-line

performance improvements for industrial

operations and is credited with safely

delivering the highest possible availability,

reliability and throughput to create a

“resilient” plant environment. Workforce

Enablement results from a combination of

skills, tools and system design which include

the following important elements:

• Competency-based learning

• Accessibility of information and

procedures on demand

• Work processes/workflow decision

support systems

• Human factor issues (situational

awareness/responsiveness)

• Effective communications and

collaboration

• Control room/system design and

environment

• User interface design for relevance

• Abnormal situation management

(including alarm system effectiveness)

• Automation and control system integrity

and reliability

• Asset performance management

(mechanical integrity and reliability)

• System data integrity (accuracy, reliability

and security)

Many companies may not need or be

able to resource process improvement

initiatives across all of these elements.

Instead what they require is prioritisation

which necessitates a Workforce Enablement

strategy.

A strategy to improve workforce enablement

Let’s first make sure we understand the goal.

The goal: Operation executives want to run

plants safely and profitably and know that

in order to achieve these objectives they

must empower employees to make better

decisions faster. That’s it.

The workforce enablement strategy

framework should address the company’s

management of:

• Content, control and decision support

systems (knowledge, documentation,

intellectual property)

“... having a high-performance team of empowered field and control operators running mission-critical processes, making better decisions faster while complying with procedural best practices is no longer a potential advantage … it is a mandatory requirement to stay in business from year to year. Success is revealed by consistently delivering execution of best practices at the point of incident as the norm, not as an exception”



• Learning (classroom and experiential)

• Business processes and workflow

(required to support the organisation’s

performance needs and continuous

improvement)

These three key elements of workforce

enablement success can be accelerated

and sustained by innovative technologies

to achieve the behavioural and culture

change required for a high-reliability

organisation to make better decisions

faster. Manufacturing competitiveness today

requires a culture where people’s behaviour

becomes more proactive, they take pride

of ownership and actively contribute

to continuous improvement. In today’s

multi-billion dollar business, simply having a

high-performance team of empowered field

and control operators running mission-

critical processes, making better decisions

faster while complying with procedural best

practices is no longer a potential advantage

… it is a mandatory requirement to stay

in business from year to year. Success is

revealed by consistently delivering execution

of best practices at the point of incident as

the norm, not as an exception.

Getting it right by design

An effective Workforce Enablement

programme should be customised to

a company’s specific situation. The

programme assessment must at all times

consider the impact changes will have on

people, processes and assets. “Getting

it right” requires identifying and

prioritising where Workforce Enablement

capabilities can best improve operational

performance. Where there is no situational

awareness, there is complacency. Factors to

be considered include:

• Organisation – field workforce, control

room and/or decision support

• Disciplines – operations, health/safety/

environmental, maintenance/reliability

• Locations – process areas, control rooms,

offsite areas

• Workforce Enablement tools –

simulation, work process management,

mobility, workflow, communications, etc.

• Scope – determining how the project fits

into a risk management plan

• Validation – leveraging industry

references and experts who have “been

there – done that”

• Justification – quantifying the ROI

payback period for management

• Auditing – assessing/tracking the benefits

based on situational data

Workforce enablement as a response to operational challenges

Operations management faces many

challenges in today’s global economy

as a result of intense competition, tight

budgets and limited resources. In addition,

the increasing complexity of plant

processes coupled with greater risk in

terms of environmental, health and safety

considerations strain operations as they run

closer and closer to safe operating limits.

Workforce Enablement can help address

many of the symptoms caused by these

concerns including:

• Inexperienced employees who lack

situational awareness to take proper

actions

• Increased complexity of processes and

procedural compliance

• Inconsistent execution of best practices

across shifts, units and sites

• Inability to rapidly access proper

documentation and procedures

• Immature safety culture that is not an

integral part of day-to-day operations

These issues affect plant employees and

supervisors at all levels. So, what can leaders

do differently to combat the “crossfire”

of high workforce turnover and increasing

regulatory compliance and to better retain

learned knowledge for future workers?

According to ARC Advisory Group, 42%

of all corporate knowledge is actually

held by employees in personal memory

(tacit knowledge). This recent report

states the downward trend in staffing

and the increased demand for accurate

real-time information will translate into

the deployment of additional operations

systems and higher, more sophisticated

levels of automation and decision support.

How does a company effectively transfer

knowledge possessed by older workers

and properly train new workers? ARC

Advisory Group suggests the smaller,

less-experienced workforce that will exist

in the future must be empowered with

new technologies and workflows that can

transfer knowledge on demand. Due to

the critical nature of operator response

and the multitude of interactions with key

operations personnel, a new generation

of training, operations and workflow

management tools are required to

capture and transfer knowledge while

empowering personnel with real-time

process and procedural support.

Workforce enablement technologies drive

behaviours that can positively impact culture

The value of any good technology is

determined by its ability to accelerate and

sustain process improvements that make

operations more safe, reliable and efficient.

When the right Workforce Enablement

technologies are in place, they support and

enforce situational awareness and proactive

behaviours which help deliver a superior

safety culture.

Many employees are in the field or in control

rooms. Management teams are responsible

for running mission-critical processes across

multi-billion dollar businesses with the most

important goals in mind—operate them

safely and profitably. Empowering these

employees with tools and “know-how” are

vitally important to enable them to make

better decisions faster while simultaneously

following the company’s procedural best

practices. Let’s look at technology solutions

aimed at addressing gaps in operational

excellence, as identified in the U.S. Chemical

Safety and Hazard Investigation Board

(CSB) 2007 findings from their review of the

BP Texas City explosion which highlighted

the need for managing and executing

better procedures in operations. The CSB

report emphasised that their findings

were not unique to one company, the site

investigated or specific accident reviewed

but are instead prevalent within the process

industries.


FACT – Great safety cultures are observed where everyone is always looking out for each other to prevent accidents and employees take pride of ownership of the company assets by actively contributing to continuous improvement.

Challenge area #1: Content, Control and Decision Support Systems

According to the CSB report, workforce

enablement challenge areas related to

control and decision support systems are:

• Poor or no maintenance of safety systems

• Start-up proceeded even though there

were reported instrument malfunctions

• High level alarm failed to activate

• Control board display was inadequate for

optimal response

• Shift handover communication was poor

or non-existent

A new approach: The control management

“toolkit”

The dissemination of process knowledge is

an important objective in a comprehensive

training programme. Interaction between

board operators, field operators,

maintenance technicians and other plant

personnel is critical to success. There

are several types of tools which enhance

knowledge of operations management and

line workers. These include simulation to

provide training in various environments,

alarm and event-notification software

to alert workers of processes that go

offline, workflow software applications

for procedure enforcement/tracking and

wireless applications which provide a mobile

infrastructure for remote data collection,

event tracking, procedure execution

according to best practices and process

validation.

A capable solution should eliminate the

distractions operators traditionally face

such as alarm storms, manual control of

process loops and tuning/optimisation of

those same loops. With the distractions

eliminated, operators can then focus on true

effectiveness by enhancing their skills and

knowledge.

Event notification and alarm management,

in addition, are important elements in the

implementation of a successful Workforce

Enablement strategy. ARC Advisory Group

has identified alarm management as an

important process automation system

function contributing to an environment

of flawless intervention. By linking

telecommunications to industrial automation

software systems, alarm management

applications enable real-time data and

immediate notification of process issues

in the facility. Operators can monitor the

entire network 24/7 and deliver validated

information to the right person at the right

time. A variety of software applications are

available which enable operators to hear the

details of an alarm through loudspeakers,

intercom systems, radios and telephones.

The technology allows operators to select

alarms and access the proper diagnostic,

identify root cause and/or access the correct

Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).

These applications also enable alerts via

alphanumeric text messages and/or emails

sent to the correct employee cell phones,

handheld computers and other mobile

devices so that plant and facility issues are

resolved quickly and accurately.

Challenge area #2: Learning (classroom and experiential)

According to the aforesaid CSB report,

Workforce Enablement challenge areas

regarding training and experiential learning

are:

• Inadequate operator training

• Lack of training for abnormal situation

management (emergencies)

• Lack of structured formal training that was

auditable and reinforced

A new approach: Experience-based

learning

With the availability of low-cost and powerful

computing, it is time to revisit simulation

as now it is a cost effective means to

assimilate new workers rapidly. Industry

leaders recognise training simulators are

a vital component to a site’s preparation

and learning programmes, placing workers

in virtual high-risk conditions and testing

their responsiveness within a risk free

environment. Operator training simulators

(OTS) provide plant field and boardroom

operators, maintenance and HSE personnel

efficient knowledge transfer and skill

development in a matter of months rather

than years. With OTS, employees are able

to improve overall skills and performance by

experiencing plant “issues” and “problems”

in a virtual reality digital environment. This

approach improves operator responses

which can reduce the number of abnormal

situation occurrences or unplanned

shutdowns and lowers the risk of loss of life,

assets, production and/or environmental

releases. In both “green field” projects

and start-ups after shutdowns at existing

facilities, these systems help ensure faster

start-up times, quicker recovery from process

upsets with less equipment stresses, and the

ability to correct procedure errors prior to

online production.

Operator training simulation software is

an essential ingredient to a successful

Workforce Enablement strategy. Many

solutions on the market today provide a

rigorous dynamic simulation and control

system emulation for process engineers,

plant engineers, operators and managers

to improve plant design, check out

controls, train operators and boost plant

performance. These solutions feature

comprehensive, dynamic process simulation

programmes which enable users to meet

and overcome the dynamic challenges

of designing and operating a modern

process plant safely and profitably. They

expedite comprehensive engineering

workflow including design, operational

analysis and dynamic simulation. In addition,

operator training and plant performance

improvements reduce capital investment

costs, increase process yields and enhance

management decisions while leveraging

existing technology investments.

3D — The next generation in OTS

Some applications take simulation one step

further by providing simulation training

in a 3D environment. These applications

are particularly useful when training

field operators working in hazardous or

mission-critical locations. This type of



advanced simulation also enables training

and operations practices to be enforced,

standardised and proliferated, from

employee to employee and maintains

consistency by shift, by plant or by site.

Comprehensive 3D simulation solutions

link control room operators to field and

maintenance operators by means of a high-

fidelity process simulation and virtual walk-

through plant environment. As a result, plant

crew training improves safety by enabling

operators to perform tasks in a simulated

environment, react quickly and correctly,

facilitate reactions in high-stress conditions

and instil standards for team training and

communications.

Challenge area #3: Business processes and workflow

According to the CSB report, workforce

enablement challenge areas regarding

procedural management and execution of

best practices are:

• Out-of-date, ineffective or unenforced

operational procedures which lead to

ad-hoc operations

• Incomplete or disregarded safety and

work permit procedures

• Insufficient absent abnormal situation

management procedures for emergency

or upset operations

• Nonexistent or passed over Management

of Change (MOC) procedures

• Irrelevant, outdated and unused written

(hard copy) procedures

A New Approach: Mobility as a key

enabler

Advancements in mobile and wireless

technology solutions provide an effective

on-the-job tool for operations management

to facilitate mobile learning. A mobile

workforce is better equipped to address

issues at the location of a problem and

determine the best course of action to

resolve the problem, leveraging remote

data. Configurable software and ruggedised

mobile hardware solutions enable a

smooth workflow, accurate data collection

and general task management for plant

operations, maintenance management,

production tracking and compliance

applications. Wireless applications are a

vital component of a complete plant and

operations management solution which

connects all wired and stranded assets,

enabling even broader visibility into

operational performance than ever before.

Mobile technology combined with intelligent

workflow technology now provides field

workers and desk workers with intelligent

on-demand dynamic procedures, pushed

to the right people based on best practices.

These procedures are not “dumb text”

documents but instead smart procedures

with decision tree logic to ensure proper

steps are followed and auditable. No more

dumb documents sitting on the shelf …

instead better, faster decisions. A capable

solution should eliminate the distractions

operators traditionally face such as alarm

storms, manual control of process loops

and tuning/optimisation of those same

loops. With the distractions eliminated, it is

possible to focus on true effectiveness by

enhancing operator skills and knowledge.


Chevron: The new path forward

Chevron was recently named by Managing

Automation as a “Progressive Manufacturing

Top 100 Award Winner” in the category

of Operational Excellence Mastery. What

are some of Chevron’s keys to success in

Operational Excellence? Let’s start with

understanding Chevron Corporation’s Top

Ten Tenets of Operation:

• Always operate within design or

environmental limits

• Always operate in a safe and controlled

condition

• Always ensure safety devices are in place

and functioning

• Always follow safe work practices and

procedures

• Always meet or exceed customers’

requirements

• Always maintain integrity of dedicated

systems

• Always comply with all applicable rules

and regulations

• Always address abnormal conditions

• Always follow written procedures for high

risk or unusual situations

• Always involve the right people in

decisions that affect procedures and

equipment

Their recent award also recognises the

company for being a leader in mobile

learning—handheld computers with

intelligent work process management

software for executing procedures according

to best practices. Chevron identified more

than half of most process manufacturing

plant assets are non-instrumented and

require numerous manual inspections.

Previously, data was often collected on

clipboards and entered into databases

or spreadsheets manually, which was not

timely enough to identify and act upon

process data when issues arose. With

the implementation of the Workforce

Enablement mobile technology, Chevron

achieved significant savings by standardising

refinery process steps using mobile workflow

software and rugged PDAs to deliver

decision support to field workers. The

company implemented a solution which

increased refinery operating reliability,

reduced maintenance costs and improved

safety and environmental compliance.

As cited at Microsoft’s Global Energy Forum

2011, the Chevron programme delivered

“higher equipment availability and faster

reaction to plant concerns (typical $1M hard

dollar annual savings per site from reduction

in unplanned downtime and maintenance

cost savings)”. The company has also

found the solution helps capture process

knowledge before workers retire and speeds

new worker assimilation through mobile

learning—both desirable outcomes of an

effective workforce enablement solution.

Summary

Plants and factories today face numerous

challenges resulting from the loss of highly

knowledgeable workers to retirement,

workforce reductions and the increasingly

complex nature of manufacturing and

industrial processes and technologies. With

such resource deficits expected to continue

during the immediate future, companies

must continually review and revise their

strategies to operate more efficiently and

profitably. Importantly, the tools they use

must be focused on specific needs and

goals.

Many of your employees in the field, control

rooms and management are responsible

for running mission-critical processes across

your enterprise with the most important

goals in mind—safe and profitable

operations. A focus on enabling these daily

decisions through Workforce Enablement

technologies is one of the most cost-

effective means of achieving greater levels of

effectiveness. With quantifiable performance

improvements for the majority of industrial

operations, Workforce Enablement not

only improves safety in control rooms,

process areas and factory floors, but is

acknowledged as one of the most important

means of maximising availability, reliability

and throughput.

Fortunately, there are new, constantly-

evolving technologies designed to address

the issues of a changing workforce and

increasingly sophisticated automation

systems. These solutions empower plant

operators with real-time information, highly

capable decision support and workflow

tools and ultra-realistic training simulation

scenarios designed to test new operations

procedures and solutions without impacting

safety or expense lines. Ultimately,

companies can manage business continuity

and profitability by leveraging a variety of

technology solutions specifically addressing

the realities of today’s streamlined – yet

highly technical – industrial environment.

At the heart of a resilient plant is your

workforce; they provide the creativity and

agility to respond to normal and abnormal

situations. Closing gaps in Workforce

Enablement requires we look at roles, tools,

resources, incentives, knowledge and skills.

An assessment is the first step to target the

right objectives and answer basic questions

to help set new Workforce Enablement

priorities.

• What performance results are expected

of the team or individual related to

short- and long-term business goals and

strategies?

• What competencies are required to meet

the target performance results?

• What gaps exist between required

practices and current performance of the

team?

• How are current work environment factors

and programmes either encouraging

the workforce to perform as needed or

discouraging them from doing so?

• What current programmes are working

and what new programmes or content

should be made available?

From the initial assessment, a recommended

solution can be derived and tied to the

business KPI targets. To learn how Invensys

can help you create the “Resilient Plant”

by enhancing your workforce enablement

strategy and plan execution, contact your

account manager.



Minimising time-to-experience and maximising performanceDr. Peter G Martin,

Vice President, business value solutions, Invensys Operations Management

About the author

Peter Martin, Vice President and

Invensys Fellow, has been hailed by

Fortune Magazine as a “Hero of U.S.

Manufacturing” and was selected by

ISA as one of the industry’s “50 Most

Infl uential Innovators.”

Over his three-decade tenure in

the process automation industries,

Dr. Martin has authored the books,

Bottom Line Automation and

Dynamic Performance Management:

The Pathway to World Class

Manufacturing, as well as numerous

articles and technical papers about

real-time performance measurement

and resource productivity. He also

holds several patents relative to

performance measurement.

Dr. Martin has held a variety of

positions at Invensys and Foxboro®

in engineering, product planning,

marketing and strategic planning. Dr.

Martin has BA and MS degrees in

Mathematics and an MA degree in

Administration and Management and

a Ph.D. in Industrial Engineering.

Background

It is generally recognised that industrial

companies are in the midst of a human

resource crisis. In a recent survey of

industrial executives, each indicated that

the aging workforce is one of their most

diffi cult challenges. The average age of

the industrial worker has been on the

increase for decades. With a large segment

of the industrial workforce on the verge

of retirement, just about every aspect of

every industrial operation is challenged with

fi lling in positions with new talent without

a signifi cant drop off in productivity. This

is particularly daunting since many of the

jobs most affected are in skilled positions

that normally require years of experience to

reach desired levels of profi ciency.

Fortunately, the sciences of human

performance management, education and

industrial technologies have advanced to

the point that the “time-to-experience” of

employees can be signifi cantly reduced over

traditional approaches. Even better, utilising

state-of-the-art approaches to human

performance improvement, the performance

of key personnel can not only rapidly grow

to meet the needs of industrial operations

facing huge personnel replacement

challenges, but their performance can

increase to new levels which are far beyond

those traditionally possible.

Traditional approach to personnel

performance management

One reason the aging of the industrial

workforce has become such a crisis is that

it has normally taken considerable time

to evolve employees to profi ciency at

their jobs. When operational employees

joined industrial organisations years ago,

they were initially put through some kind

of formal training programme. Following

initial training, they were then put on

the job under the supervision of highly

experienced workers, or work teams, so that

the knowledge of these highly experienced

workers could be slowly transferred to the

less experienced employees. Over the

years, the employees would progress in

both experience and profi ciency until they

reached a level of effi ciency and expertise,

enabling them to transition into positions

of leadership on their respective teams.

Industrial jobs were so challenging and

industrial operations so complex that it

might take years or even decades for a

worker to progress to the desired level.

The traditional progression of talent to

profi ciency works quite well if the workforce

is continually comprised of a number of

employees at different levels of progression.

This provides a continual group of talent

in position to take over as the more

experienced talent leaves the workforce.

Unfortunately, from the early 1990s to today,


there have been fewer people entering

the industrial workforce due to economic

downturns, technological innovations that

replaced head count, and better work

opportunities in other market sectors.

Coupled with significant downsizing that

accompanied the economic downturns,

the result is a critical talent gap for many

industrial companies. Many companies

now have a large number of older, highly

experienced personnel preparing to

retire and a large number of relatively

inexperienced workers not quite ready to

take over the vacated responsibilities. Today,

the traditional approach to bringing on and

training inexperienced employees does not

suffice.

Educational sciences

Much educational design prior to the 1970s

was focused on how to make lecture-style

classroom training more effective. We often

refer to this as academic education. In areas

such as the natural sciences, classroom

training was typically supplemented by more

experientially-oriented training in the form

of lab exercises. It has long been understood

that there are certain things that are much

better learned, understood and retained if

the student can be exposed to the theory

through a more academic classroom lecture

approach and experience the results through

experiential laboratories.

As I was taking graduate courses in

education during the late 1970s, the

educational community in the United States

had just started to formally recognise

the power of experiential education in

areas other than the natural sciences. A

number of the courses were set up to

work through case studies as though the

student was going through an actual,

real world experience. The effectiveness

of experiential programmes for certain

types of training was significantly better

than a traditional classroom experience. A

number of colleges and universities started

introducing experience-based courses into

their curriculum. As a result, the power of

experience-based education to bring up a

novice to a reasonable experience level for

certain aspects of training started to become

generally recognised.

Today, the most effective results in human

resource development typically involve

an effective combination of academic

and experiential training. The academic

training is effective at communicating

overall theory while the experiential training

provides a more pragmatic perspective.

The time to effectiveness of people

encountering new work environments can

often be significantly reduced through the

effective combination of academic and

experiential training approaches. Certainly

the ultimate experiential training approach

is direct on-the-job training. People grow

in effectiveness at the highest rate when

actually performing tasks on the job.

Minimising time-to-experience in industrial environments through simulation

Since industrial companies are facing a

huge human resource experience gap

issue, it has become absolutely essential,

for the sustainable performance of

these operations, to reduce the time-to-

experience of new employees and workers

who have been brought into the operations

over the last five years. It has become clear

that the most effective way to accomplish

this is through a combination of academic,

experiential and on-the-job training.

Although classroom training is critically

important in setting the overall context of

the plant operation and getting employees

to understand the overall theory of

operation, research has demonstrated that

students retain less than 30% of what they

are presented in this manner. Instructors are

typically trained to go over important points

and issues at least three separate times

during the classroom sessions in order to get

to the 30% level. You might hear instructors

repeat the adage to “tell them what you are

going to say, say it, then tell them what you

said” to get the three repetitions. Although

this is good instructional methodology, it

still only gets the students to a basic level of

comprehension.

Experiential training approaches provide

a higher level of retention than academic

approaches, and are even more effective if

they are used as a follow-on to a classroom

session. Employees can immediately put

the knowledge they have gained in the

classroom to practice − thus reinforcing what

they had learned to increase retention and

adding to what they had learned to further

drive to effectiveness.

Unfortunately, many industrial processes are

significantly negatively impacted through

inexperienced operations and maintenance

teams. Plant management is justifiably

reluctant to allow inexperienced operations

personnel to get the level of live on-the-job

experiential training required to truly reduce

their time to effectiveness. The solution to

this is “near-time experiential training” using

training simulators or even virtual reality

systems. Training simulators are available

today at multiple levels of sophistication

from simple process loop simulators all the

way to full rigorous first principle model

simulations of the entire plant. Very effective

training can be done with all levels of

simulation to give operations personnel

firsthand experience to multiple levels of

detail.

Full rigorous, first principle model simulators

allow operators to experience a simulation

which is as close to a real plant operating

Minimising time-to-experience and maximising performance


environment as possible. Instructors can

help operators walk through what would

be extremely dangerous situations in the

plant, but with the simulator they can learn

to effectively respond in a safe environment.

This near-time experiential approach to

training can significantly reduce the time-to-

experience for operators by enabling them

to learn through a hands-on approach to

deal with both normal operational situations

as well as exceptional and abnormal

situations that only occur infrequently in live

plant operations.

Recently, there has been a major

breakthrough in the area of near-time

experiential training with the introduction of

low-cost virtual reality interfaces to rigorous,

first principle model simulators. These

virtual reality systems enable operations

and maintenance personnel to engage in

highly effective, yet safe, immersive training

environments that are incredibly true to

live plant operations. These immersive

training systems, when effectively deployed

and used in conjunction with training

simulators and classroom approaches, can

significantly reduce the time-to-experience

for operations and maintenance personnel,

and help close the experience gap that is

plaguing industry.

Beyond time-to-experience – continuous performance improvement

Closing the experience gap is absolutely

essential to the effective operation of

industrial plants, especially as the departure

of the present aging workforce continues

to accelerate. Closing the experience gap

however, will only sustain operations at the

same levels that they are achieving today.

Plant business performance must improve

or it will become increasingly difficult to

compete in industrial markets that are

rapidly becoming commoditised.

Again, technological advances have

provided an ideal solution for driving

continuous profitability improvement from

industrial assets. It has been commonly

accepted for decades that on-the-job

training (OJT) is critically effective, but

most traditional OJT approaches involve

a highly experienced worker supervising

the behaviour of less experienced workers.

Although this has been adequate, it

is constrained by only allowing the

less experienced workers to get to the

experience level and efficiency of their

mentors.

Recent advances in the areas of real-

time Key Performance Indicators (KPIs),

real-time accounting, real-time workflow

management, and real-time contextualised

business intelligence are providing

environments in which automatic,

electronically produced information on the

operations and financial performance of

the enterprise is available, and accessible

to every person in the operation. Whether

they are a stationary worker at a traditional

workstation or a remote worker using a

mobile wireless unit, real-time operations

intelligence can be provided in a format

commensurate with each person’s

experience, training and capability. The

resulting real-time “dashboards” or

“scorecards” provide an online, real-time

performance training environment for any

person who has the potential to impact the

operational or financial performance of the

plant.

With this immediate performance feedback,

each person can assess the performance

impact of their actions, immediately after the

actions are taken. For example, a common

activity of a process operator may be to

adjust a temperature. Traditionally they just

hoped that the new temperature was a good

idea. With real-time performance feedback

they can immediately discern if the change

added or detracted value. Over time, they

will learn how to perform their actions in a

manner that continually creates the most

value of the operation.

Experience with real-time OJT performance

can drive both the operational and financial

performance delivered by every person to

measurable and previously unattainable

levels. In fact, on average this type of

training realises a 100% return on investment

within three months.

Sustainable, measurable performance

improvements come from a combination of

training approaches geared to minimising

time to efficiency, then driving to new levels

of operational and financial performance

(Figure 1). The exact combination will be

different for each industrial organisation and

will depend on current experience, training

level and complexity of the operation.

Consultants familiar with both state-of-the-

art training approaches and the needs of

industrial operations can help design the

programme that specifically meets the needs

of each operation.

Every effective programme should be looked

at as a continuous and integral part of an

industrial operation rather than a “training

event.” The goals and objectives should be

clearly set to:

• Ensure there is an effective approach to

minimise the impact of the experience

gap in the organisation

• Drive continuous performance

improvement of the operation

Figure 2 represents the impact of traditional

Figure 1: Improving time-to-performance through training


Figure 2: Human resource proficiency progression model

training approaches (orange line) and

illustrates the potential positive impact that

an effective approach to training can have

on time-to-experience.

Conclusion

The aging of the workforce and the growing

number of experienced industrial personnel

ready to retire over the next few years,

coupled with the gap in experience of the

remaining workforce, is creating a crisis for

industrial operations. As highly experienced

personnel are retiring, the remaining

workforce is not at an adequate level of

proficiency to take over operations. A new

approach, based on state-of-the-art training

approaches and technological capabilities,

is now available to both minimise time to

efficiency and drive incremental continuous

operational and financial performance

improvements.

The Invensys Business Value Solutions team

can design a solution that meets the needs

of any industrial organisation experiencing

this gap. The Invensys approach is not only

starting to reap benefits in terms of raising

the overall experience level to fill the gap

left by retirements, it is also helping to drive

measurably increased profitability through

better human performance management,

resulting in 100% returns within three months.

If the experience gap is a problem in your

operation, or if you would like to drive more

performance from your current workforce, it

may be time to engage the Business Value

Solutions team – from Invensys. Find out at

iom.invensys.com.

Minimising time-to-experience and maximising performance


Product profile: EYESIM Immersive Virtual Reality Training System

In a nutshell ...

EYESIM™ is a comprehensive solution that links control room

operators to field operators and maintenance operators by means

of a high-fidelity process simulation and virtual walkthrough plant

environment. EYESIM provides complete plant crew training to

improve skills that are safety-critical by enabling operators to

perform tasks in a simulated environment, allowing them to react

quickly and correctly, facilitating reactions in high stress conditions,

and instilling standards for team training and communications.

The EYESIM solution is comprised of a modelling engine, powered

by SimSci-Esscor’s DYNSIM®; services through the SIM4ME® bridge

and is coupled with a high performing virtual reality engine and a

high quality 3D modelling/scanning toolset.

Key Benefits:

• Provide a realistic virtual environment for trainees with the

opportunity for extended practice sessions

• Improve environment, health & safety (EH&S) compliancy by

promoting safer shutdowns and turnarounds and lowering

emissions

• Boost operator knowledge management, capturing best

practices procedures, site-specific processes and reducing

operator errors

• Decrease upfront training costs for new personnel

• Reduce maintenance budgets

Key Capabilities:

• EYESIM can be used for predictive analysis in support of EH&S

initiatives

• Implement a standardised process for analysis, tracking, accident

investigation, escalation and remediation

• Encourage collaboration across departmental lines and facilitate

communication & coordination among team members

• Allow remote access of processes and remote management

through unmanned execution

• Boost productivity with localised plans, processes visualisation

and standard work procedures

• Allow maintenance activities to be improved during an outage

though a comprehensive virtual analysis of equipment

Production processes are only as effective as those who control them

and that’s why effective training is perhaps the quickest way to an

improved bottom line. EYESIM from SimSci-Esscor has earned an

enviable reputation doing just that.


A comprehensive plant crew training solution

EYESIM™ Immersive Virtual Reality

is a comprehensive solution linking

Control Room Operators to Field Operators,

Maintenance Operators and other critical

team members in your process by means

of a High-Fidelity Process Simulation

coupled with a Virtual Walkthrough Plant

Environment. EYESIM provides a complete

Plant Crew Training System, capturing

best practices, rarely-used procedures and

other operations and makes them systems of

record for continuous use and refinement.

Modular architecture

EYESIM’s modular architecture allows

you to link to major DCS systems, as

well as “traditional” Operator Training

Simulators. Leveraging the SIM4ME®

Portal, which provides simple, web-based

bidirectional transfer of variables between

SimSci- Esscor’s™ Dynamic Simulation

Suite software and Microsoft Excel®, a

collaborative engineering environment is

created to facilitate drag and drop, multi-

variable application simulation control.

Traditional training simulators don’t cover field operators

As figure 2 shows, the second-highest

source of accidents in plant operations are

operational errors. Your challenge? How

to ensure that the practices you create are

enforced, standardised, and proliferated,

from employee to employee, and maintain

consistency by shift, by plant, or by site.

Static control systems using DCS systems

don’t allow for rich simulation or software

emulation of processes. Traditional

operator consoles with HMI interfaces

don’t allow for heuristic learning; and the

plant systems that are reflected cannot

accommodate the dynamic process model

that is required to capture ongoing changes

and refinements.

Now, virtual reality comes to the plant

What if your process could be simulated,

with full operator interaction? Emulating

not only the existing hardware and software

systems, but the physical plant design and

layout, and operator consoles? And creating

an interactive, 3D environment for training,

testing, and process simulation? That is what

EYESIM Immersive Virtual Reality Training

brings.

Modelling your plant the way it is and the way it

will be. Integrating CAD/CAM designs through

DYNSIM® for complete design simulation.

With a new Virtual Reality HMI paradigm

Figure 1: Some of the components of EYESIM’s modular architecture



using Interactive, 3D Stereoscopic Models for

operator familiarisation and training.

EYESIM benefits: optimise training throughout the plant

• Provide more realistic environments for

trainees, with the opportunity for practice

of procedures in training sessions

• React quickly and correctly in medium/

high stress situations (accident

investigation and training)

• Improve skills for rarely-performed, but

safety-critical tasks such as emergency

shutdowns

• Optimise the transfer of skills from “off-

line” training environments to the work

environment

• Reliable and valid evaluation of

operational procedures and individual

operator performance

• Maximise team training and

communications in the control room

or field by shift and by operations

management

EYESIM brings real value to operations

EYESIM has been shown to reduce the

time-to-value and costs of on-the-job training

by 30 to 40%. It reduces the time of start-up

when recovering from a planned or unplanned

shutdown, or from warm/cold conditions, by

15 to 20%. And, it contributes to maintenance

budget savings of 1 to 3%. These costs can

rapidly reduce the total cost of ownership for

EYESIM within the first year of deployment.

EYESIM’s solution components

EYESIM represents the “best in breed” of

training components from SimSci-Esscor,

representing generations of design and

operator training simulation:

• For the Modelling Engine, DYNSIM

simulation is used

• For collaboration and integration,

SIM4ME portal

• A rigorous Virtual Reality Engine adds

capabilities

• A 3D Model and Viewer offer state-of-the-

art operator interaction and experience

Services offerings

To complement the software, offerings include:

• A managed service model for total system

maintenance and upkeep

• 3D Photo Scanning and 3D Modelling

Figure 2: Accident percentages due to the most common causes


• Virtual Reality configuration

• Systems integration

• Training Programmes

Infrastructure

Whether you need a virtual reality facility to

test your designs, hardware and equipment

for deployment, or mobile solutions for

remote data entry and operator feedback,

these components are available to complete

your Virtual Reality system.

Basic architecture

EYESIM’s Virtual Reality experience starts

with the control room—a Virtual Reality

engine provides operators with a rich, 3D

experience using special visors for field

training. DYNSIM Dynamic Simulation

Software from SimSci-Esscor contributes

High-Fidelity Simulation for operator training

and process engineering design studies. All

contribute to increasing the operator’s basic

understanding of the processes, equipment,

and procedures necessary for safe and

reliable operations.

EYESIM savings

Use EYESIM to accelerate cost savings that

can show a lower total cost of ownership

after just a few months’ use. Typical savings

include:

• Save 30 to 40% on time and costs of

on-the-job training

• Reduce time of start-ups, from planned/

unplanned shutdowns, or from warm/cold

conditions, by 15 to 20%

• Save 1 to 3% on maintenance budgets.

Figure 3: System overview

Figure 4: A greenfield refinery

producing 200 000 barrels per

day can make annual savings

of $3M to $4M using EYESIM.



Operator simulator training improves GenOn power station efficiency

Invensys improves GenOn Power Station’s operational efficiency, enhances workforce enablement and reduces costs with operator training simulator solution

Goals

• GenOn Energy needed to develop a training program to enable

the easy transfer of technical knowledge and real-world experience

from veteran power plant operators to new trainees in the shortest

possible time period

• The company required a training solution that could deliver a high-

fidelity model of the Circulating Fluidised Bed (CFB) waste coal-fired

combustion process

Challenges

• Seward Generating Station management had to overcome initial

scepticism from veteran operators that a computer simulator solution

could replicate the intricacies and nuances of running an advanced

technology waste coal-fired power station

• New equipment and upgrades required the testing of alternative

procedures and processes, which needed to be conducted without

impacting live plant operations

Solutions and Products

• SimSci-Esscor® DYNSIM®

• SimSci-Esscor DYNSIM OPC Server

• SimSci-Esscor DYNSIM OPC Client Link to ABB Harmony Training

Simulator (HTS)

Results

• The simulator is successfully being used to qualify new trainees and

simulation training has standardised responses to specific problem

or error conditions

• All control changes are first made and tested on the simulator before

implementing on the plant, improving operational efficiencies and

adding higher levels of confidence to control room management

Coal remains an abundant source of energy and is a strong, economical

alternative to costlier fossil fuels such as oil and natural gas. New

technologies and processes are being employed at coal-fired power

stations that can significantly reduce the environmental impact while

providing economical power to a community.

GenOn Energy’s Seward Generating Station is in this new class of

“The Invensys solution has helped us significantly, that’s the pure dollars and cents of the project. But there’s also been quality of life improvements regarding overtime for the control room operators.”

Alan Metzler Operations Manager GenOn Energy’s Seward Generating Station


environment friendly power generation

because it is specifically designed to

economically use low quality waste fuel while

assisting in reclaiming fallow land. The plant,

located in the lush valleys and rolling hills

of western Pennsylvania about 70 miles east

of Pittsburgh, turns waste coal not suitable

for traditional coal-fired generating stations

into safe, reliable power with significantly

reduced environmental impact.

Invensys offers track record with power station training solution

The Circulating Fluidised Bed (CFB) power

station was commissioned in 2004, replacing

a traditional coal-fired plant constructed on

the same site in 1919. The new plant now

produces 525 megawatts, nearly three times

the power output of the prior plant. Plus

the Seward station hit the record books as

the largest waste coal power station in the

world. The power station was named the

2004 “Plant of the Year” by Platt’s Power

magazine and the facility was additionally

honoured with the Pennsylvania Governor’s

Award for Environmental Excellence.

When GenOn Energy looked for unique

solutions for bolstering the efficiency of the

power station through enhanced operator

training and procedural improvements, the

company turned to Invensys Operations

Management after a search of companies

specifically with extensive experience in

power station systems. Invensys already had a

demonstrated track record with power station

boiler simulators, with the added advantage

of on-staff engineers who had previously

worked for CFB boiler manufacturers.

“What made Invensys stand out over others

was the technology and expertise of the

proposed team members that were going

to be part of the simulator,” said Brian

Rematt, controls engineer at the Seward

Generating Station. “It made my decision

pretty easy as to which company to go with.

When it all came down to it we felt Invensys

could deliver the best simulator for the final

outcome we were looking for.”

The CFB combustion process for coal-fired

power installations was developed in

Europe more than 30 years ago, and has

more recently found favour with U.S. power

generators. The CFB process turns blighted

piles of waste coal into reclaimed green

space for community use. Since the other

CFB power plants are much smaller than the

Seward station, the plant has a unique set of

operational and training needs.

The Seward power plant is a relatively

new facility within GenOn Energy, one

of the largest generators of wholesale

electricity in the U.S. with a total capacity

exceeding 24,000 megawatts via coal,

natural gas and oil. It is regarded as a critical

generating plant in the fleet because of

the considerable investment in the CFB

technology and the commitment to the

environmentally friendly use of coal. With

corporate eyes focused on the success

of the Seward facility, plant management

relied on Invensys to deliver new training

approaches that would turn the plant into a

showcase for the entire GenOn organisation.

“The quality, professionalism and

knowledge of the Invensys team exceeded

our expectations,” said Paul Demi, shift

supervisor and simulator trainer. “The

Invensys engineers wanted to make a

simulator that they could sit back and be

proud of as much as we wanted the same.

That helped drive all of us to do the best we

could and work closely together.”

Challenges of a sophisticated, new power generation process

Transitioning from a standard pulverised

coal-fired process to CFB did not come

without overcoming a few hurdles. In

addition to increasing regulatory compliance

and implications of an aging workforce,

managers were concerned about worker

performance issues; specifically day-to-

day plant operations and the analysis of

processes and procedures.

The start-up and shutdown sequences as

well as equipment maintenance procedures

for a CFB plant are distinct from traditional

coal-fired power station operations. The

control technology and power generation

systems are highly specialised and

require heightened levels of vigilance

by well-trained operators. As a result,

plant management focused on ways to

leverage the knowledge of its experienced

operators so that it could be easily

transferred to staff involved in the operator

training program. The power generating

station needed a solution that could train

prospective operators in an extremely

dynamic environment so that the nuances

and operational sensitivities of the CFB

combustion process could be experienced

in the assured safety of a simulated control

room environment.

“We felt we had to do something with a

simulator and it seemed to be a potential,”

said Alan Metzler, operations manager for

the Seward Generating Station. “We did

a lot of upfront investigation regarding

understanding simulators and how they might

model a CFB. Invensys made us feel even

more comfortable by telling us it was going

to be a tough project and that they weren’t

sure they could do it with the accuracy that

we were asking for. We knew that would be

an issue because of the nature of the CFB.”

The alternative to plant simulation was to

drill down on conventional management

and operator training approaches, with a

focus on classroom instruction with carefully

supervised on-the-job training. Instead,

plant management decided to step outside

of the traditional training envelope with

operator training simulator (OTS) technology

already proven in other types of fossil fuel

power stations. However, the simulator

training approach wasn’t received without

some scepticism from the veteran operators.

“When we first told the people about the

simulator they initially laughed at it and

thought it was going to be a waste,” said

Larry Borsa, control room operator at the

Seward station. “Now the people that have

gone through the training come into the

control room totally amazed about how the

simulator closely mirrors the control room.

Their confidence level is very, very good.

They are not afraid to make changes; they are

not afraid to do different things. Also, with

the observations of the equipment running

they’ve become very aware of what’s going

on around them. I trained a lot of operators

at the old station and it took a long time just

to get people to touch something. We no

longer have that issue with the people going

through this new training procedure.”

The SimSci-Esscor DYNSIM solution selected

for the project is a comprehensive, dynamic

process simulation program designed to

enable Seward power plant operators to

tackle the challenges of operating one of the



world’s largest CFB plant safely and with a

bottom-line eye on performance and operating

cost efficiency. The simulation technology

offers a basis for a comprehensive approach

to operator training, which in turn improves

plant performance and reduces capital

investment costs by improving the consistency

of operations and lowering the probability of

equipment damage due to incorrect operation.

The Seward plant operates two CFB boilers

that produce steam to power an Alstom

steam turbine. CFB technology increases

the residence time of the fuel in the furnace

significantly, allowing low BTU waste coal

fuel to burn completely. Also, CFB furnaces

operate at a lower furnace temperature

than traditional coal firing technology,

which, when combined with the selective

non-catalytic reduction system installed in

the flue gas path, results in low NOx (nitric

oxide and nitrogen dioxide) emissions.

Sulphur dioxide emissions are controlled

by injecting limestone into the furnace and

via an ash hydration and re-injection system

installed at the plant. Particulate emissions

are controlled with a bag house.

“The expertise and knowledge of

our people along with an unwavering

commitment to customer success was

the differentiator in the selection process

and the key contributors in a resoundingly

successful project. DYNSIM once again

showed itself to be the industry leading

software platform for both Power and

Hydrocarbon Processing Operator Training

Simulators. The team worked tirelessly with

GenOn to understand the requirements

and deliver a project that far exceeded

customer expectations,” said Alastair Fraser,

V.P. Global Consulting/Solutions Services,

Invensys Operations Management.

The simulator was created using the SimSci-

Esscor DYNSIM. It was designed to create

first-principle models of process operations,

including typical power plant equipment.

The flexibility of DYNSIM made it possible to

extend the existing furnace model to achieve

a realistic representation of the Seward CFB

boilers. The system used a virtual stimulation

of the plant’s ABB Harmony distributed

control system (DCS). In addition, the

Invensys solution also emulated the Alstom

steam turbine controls and the PLC-based

controls for the ash-handling and air-heater

leak detection systems. Communication

between the DYNSIM model and the ABB

HTS virtual controllers was accomplished

through the DYNSIM OPC client

communicating with a server embedded in

the ABB HTS system. The link between the

DYNSIM emulation of PLC controls in the

plant and the Harmony DCS was conducted

through the DYNSIM OPC server.

Invensys simulator technology sways the sceptics

Despite operator reservations that the

complex CFB coal-burning process could

not be easily modelled in a computer

simulation, Invensys was able to deliver

a solution with an extremely high level of

process fidelity. Invensys extended the

capabilities of its existing high-fidelity

furnace model, adding calculations related

to the inventory and circulation of ash in

the furnace, which allowed the addition

of heat transfer, combustion and pressure

gradient calculations specific to the CFB.

These equations could be tuned to match

the start-up behaviour observed at the plant.

Another simulator accomplishment was the

modelling of the coal ignition process.

“The hardest part is to get an operator

to understand the process and the

interactions,” said Metzler. “They are able

to see all that in the simulator. That’s not

something you get in a classroom or a

textbook or in a procedure. You have to

live it. Fortunately our operators are now

able to ‘live it’ via simulation, and they are

able to deal with many more scenarios and

situations in a much smaller amount of time

than someone could possibly experience

under any other training program.”

Indeed, the simulator has been so true-to-

life that plant operators have been able

to use the technology to identify control

issues and create what-if scenarios off-line,

then incorporate new processes and

control solutions into plant operations. The

simulator training is considered so realistic

that it can both qualify new plant trainees

and maintain and enhance the skills of even

the most senior power plant operators.

Mirroring live operations is the key to success

The control room layout is a horseshoe design.

The centre HMI screen controls the steam

turbine, and to the left and right are four DCS

screens, complemented by a set of PLC HMI

screens for a total of 13 HMI monitors. The

simulator training room is virtually a mirror

image of the control room setup and, to help

trainees stay close to the pulse of the plant, is

located within 30 feet of live operations.

“When we are doing the training we can

compare what we are doing in here to what’s

going on in the real plant -- it makes a good

connection for the trainees,” Metzler said. “It

was important for us to have the simulator

in an area that would be representative of

real-life control conditions. The research

we had done stressed the importance of

making it as realistic as possible so that it’s

not just a bunch of computer screens in an

unrealistic setup on a worktable in the back of

a conference room. We spent a good amount

of money to have a special area available and

the team spent a significant amount of effort

in the design application and then in the

construction of the system to have it be an

almost exact replica of the real control room.

Space is at premium in the plant but we made

a commitment to have it located near

the actual control room as opposed

to putting it in a trailer in a parking lot

somewhere.”

A number of considerations weighed into

the decision to implement an operator

training simulator solution. Factors included

new plant equipment, new operating

procedures and insufficient or inappropriate

training. The Seward plant confronted the

additional challenge of training additional

personnel as the new CFB equipment came

online. Staffing needed to be doubled to

increase the number of trained control room

operators at the 24/7 plant, and on-the-job

training was no longer a practical approach

for knowledge transfer of the sophisticated

CFB combustion process.

“When we first started there were people

who didn’t think it could be done,” said Demi.

“There was always a question as to whether

we were ever going to reach our goal. Now

we bring a person that has never worked in

the control room and give them four weeks

of intense training, 10 hour days, five days a

week. When they go into the control room

they not only know how to operate the

equipment but they feel comfortable working


with the controls. To be able to train someone

to operate the DCS for a plant our size speaks

volumes to what the simulator can do. I’d say

hands down we reached our goal.”

For watchers of the bottom line, simulation pays mighty dividends

The Invensys solution has provided

additional dividends that have exceeded

the success in operator training. DYNSIM

technology is now used to develop and

test new control logic options that can be

incorporated into the DCS.

“All in all, the simulator has saved our

bacon,” Metzler said. “We originally got

it to train control room operators and to

improve our existing operations. We can

say it scored an A+ for all of that. Our

human performance errors and resulting

loss in generation has been reduced

significantly. This came at a time when

capital dollars for the installation were

scrutinised as much as I have ever seen in

my career at power plants. But we were

committed that if we were going to do it,

we were going to do it right and we kept

to our guns and achieved a successful

outcome. We didn’t want something close

enough; we needed something right on.”

“After a recent turbine control system

upgrade the plant struggled to put the unit

online. There was a considerable amount of

computer handshaking happening invisible

to the operators. It wasn’t happening like

it should have so we decided to try it on

the simulator, and when we did that, sure

enough, we witnessed what we should have

been seeing in real life,” said Rematt. “And

then we actually applied it to our own device

and we were able to get the turbine online

the very first time. Prior to that we had two

to three failed attempts but after we saw it

on the simulator, how it should really go, we

took that onto the floor and applied that and

it worked the first time.”

Control development on the simulator delivers real-world solutions

The simulator was additionally used to

develop controls to mitigate relief valve

operation due to pump overpressure issues.

After running through several tests and

developing process approach options,

management implemented the new logic in

the plant, bringing additional safety to power

generation operations and shortstopping

potential undesired cascading shutdown

events involving pressure relief valves, feed

water pumps, the boiler furnaces and the

power-producing steam turbine.

“You can’t understate that, that is very

significant, the single occurrence of bringing

the turbine online saved a lot of time and

money but this issue with the relief valves, it

was significant dollars and significant time

and many other benefits,” said Metzler.

The simulator has enabled operators to

define alternative procedures for handling

certain process conditions. For example,

the procedure to handle a feed water

pump trip now calls for the trip of one of

the two boilers, which enables the plant to

continue safe operation at half load. Also

the simulator has been used to increase the

efficiency of the plant start-up and shutdown

procedures. Plus simulator training has

improved operational reliability and

established the standardisation of operator

responses to problem conditions.

Invensys’ dedication continues from project through support

The Invensys SimSci-Esscor simulator team

retains its “customer first” philosophy of

remaining dedicated through the life of the

simulator investment.

“We started with Invensys at a point when

we tried to fine tune the simulator to the

best areas that we could in comparison to

the plant and overall it took a long period

of time and dedication from Invensys,” said

Borsa. “They went above and beyond all

expectations in terms of trying to work with

us to try to make this simulator that would

be well worth the investment. It took a lot of

hours and dedication on everyone’s part.”

GenOn clearly saw the need to enable its

workforce so that employees would be in

a position to make confident, informed

decisions. A combination of skills, tools

and system design were brought together

in a manner that accelerated process

improvements from capturing, transferring

and institutionalising best practices.

“From a support perspective we haven’t

had many issues with the simulator; it’s been

relatively problem-free for more than two

years,” said Rematt. “A few months ago

the simulator was tripping off the boilers for

unknown reasons, but the screens would say

we still had pressure. But through a remote

connection we were able to troubleshoot

where the problem area was and correct it in

a relatively short period of time.”

Invensys solution prepares operators and enhances working environment

Since the Invensys solution was installed,

by all accounts it has exceeded the

performance expectations of GenOn Energy.

The Invensys simulator is now the gold

standard for preparing operators to work in

the plant, and training time has been cut in

half compared to the prior classroom and

on-the-job learning approaches.

“The Invensys solution has helped us

significantly, that’s the pure dollars and cents

of the project,” Metzler said. “But there’s

also been quality of life improvements

regarding overtime for the control room

operators. Our control room operators don’t

have to work 40 percent overtime to cover

when people are unavailable because of

vacation time or sick leave. We now have

highly trained operators available for the

central control room, fully confident in being

able to step in when needed.”

Experienced operators also now routinely

sharpen their skills in dealing with plant

problems and alerts, as well as test scenarios

to develop more efficient operational

procedures. Testing procedures in the

simulator reduce the risk and anxiety

associated with changing or modifying

control room procedures in the power plant.

While GenOn spearheads reclamation of

green space in Pennsylvania using its CFB

boilers, Invensys has served as a key partner

in helping the company achieve excellence

in preparing the workforce while maximising

the operational and cost efficiencies of the

power station.



Product profile: IntelaTrac for improved situation awareness

In a nutshell ...

IntelaTrac is an enterprise-level software

and hardware solution that delivers a

mobile workforce management solution

to a wide range of industries.

IntelaTrac enables manufacturers and

processors to achieve reliable, safe and

profitable operations through consistent

execution of best practices by the field

workforce − accelerating and sustaining

mainstream process improvements.

Business value

• Key success factor for field operational

excellence

• Helps steward the consistent

execution of best practices

• Provides strategy for monitoring

stranded assets

• Supports rapid response to changing

business conditions

• Key success factor for equipment

reliability

• Helps assimilate new field workers

With about 50% or more of most plants left

non-instrumented, who’s going to pick up

the pieces when (not if) they go wrong? And

what about the instrumented parts? SCADA

systems are not well known for sniffing

out burning oil. Effective maintenance

relies heavily on human observational skills

provided these observations can be logged

and form an integral part of the greater

SCADA and maintenance picture.

The industry-leading mobile workforce and decision support system

IntelaTrac® accelerates and sustains

operational process improvements and is a

key component of an effective Operations

Management System. IntelaTrac helps

insure that best operating and regulatory

procedures are followed at all times, data

is collected on non-instrumented plant

assets, critical environmental, health and

safety inspections are performed on schedule

and mobile operators have the information at

their fingertips to operate plant assets in the

most effective manner possible.

Helping your front line manage your bottom line

Operational Excellence starts with operators.

IntelaTrac brings the field operator into the

automation loop by utilising a combination

of workforce management software, mobile

handheld computers, monitoring devices and

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) equipment

tags or bar codes. This mobile framework results

in a significantly improved decision support

system for managing plant assets.

Workers are easily guided through a

question and answer process which helps

uncover hidden bottlenecks and process

or equipment problems. If problems are

found, IntelaTrac can immediately guide

workers through additional steps or actions

to properly identify and address the

developing issue.

IntelaTrac’s exception-based, web reports

keep everyone on the team up-to-speed on

the current state of plant operations.

IntelaTrac’s web services-based API

connectivity ensures the lowest total cost

of ownership by adding a highly extensible

mobile platform.

Enforce best operating procedures

Best practices are only meaningful if they are

consistently and broadly applied across an

enterprise. IntelaTrac rounds are presented to

mobile workers and each step can be tracked

to ensure compliance and accountability.

Strategy for stranded assets

Stranded or non-instrumented assets often

represent 40—60% of your asset base but

are too often “invisible” to management.

IntelaTrac provides a cost effective strategy

for monitoring and reporting back on the

performance of stranded assets.

Respond faster and improve your competitiveness

For the first time you can execute pre-

defined strategies when your business or

environmental conditions change allowing

you to improve your organisational agility

and competitiveness. IntelaTrac’s Dynamic

Procedures allow pre-configured procedures

to be automatically passed to your field

operators so they can begin securing a facility


or ramping up production on a moment’s

notice. Teams know exactly what to do and

when. Lag time and confusion are minimised.

As conditions change IntelaTrac’s highly

extensible and open mobile platform can

also deliver mobile procedures directly from

a wide range of plant systems. The mobile

worker then executes these specific tasks

and forwards any collected information

back to the host system. Plant systems

never designed with a mobile capability,

such as historians, LIMS systems, MES

systems and CMMS/EMS systems can now

incorporate mobile task execution and field

data collection.

Achieve greater process reliability and asset effectiveness

IntelaTrac empowers field workers to be

part of the reliability solution, it helps

drive collective behaviour and a culture of

asset ownership between operations and

maintenance. Equipment condition data

such as vibration or temperature can be

easily collected by field operators using

the IntelaTrac mobile solution as they do

their regular operating rounds. Stranded or

Non-instrumented plant assets can now be

efficiently monitored.

Better manage workforce turnover

IntelaTrac’s innovative on-the-job

training approach gets your newest field

workers up to speed—FAST. IntelaTrac

allows experienced workers to incorporate

their knowledge into operating and

inspection rounds. This means best practices

can be easily documented and used by

all field workers, even the most junior of

operators—insulating plants or facilities from

a sudden loss of operating knowledge.

Unifying your field workforce with your plant automation system

Now the state-of-the-art Wonderware

System Platform can share data with your

IntelaTrac equipped mobile workforce. The

myriad of plant automation data can now be

funnelled to your mobile workers keeping

them up-to-date on current operational

conditions. You can also use the Mobile

IntelaTrac system to push field collected

data back up into the automation system

so it can be exposed in operator displays

or to engineers or managers utilising plant

information portals.

Improving the efficiency of your maintenance organisation

IntelaTrac is a natural tool for improving the

efficiency of maintenance activities. Mobile

IntelaTrac can be loaded with a complete list

of daily maintenance tasks (including step-

by-step instructions) so critical maintenance

can be done right the first time.

If a wireless network is present, information

on work order status, work requests and

current operating conditions can be made

available to your field workers in real time.

Maintenance workers will have the detailed

information at their fingertips so they can

get the job done in the shortest possible

time.

Better field management of capital projects

Even with the best team, managing the

installation and commissioning of new capital

projects and turnarounds can be challenging.

How do you know when specific field tasks

have been accomplished? And if things change

and they always do, how do you ensure that

everyone is on the same page? IntelaTrac can

provide the vital mobile infrastructure, including

RFID location verification technology, that you

can exploit to keep everyone informed and

working the task list.

Server components/integration software

• IntelaTrac Database Server: Microsoft

SQL Server based database management

server

• IntelaTrac Synchronisation Server:

Mobile device communication server

• IntelaTrac Web Server: Web report

server

Product profile: IntelaTrac for improved situation awareness


• Integration Modules: Software modules

that integrate third party enterprise and

plant systems to IntelaTrac (SAP PM, IBM

Maximo, OSIsoft PI System, AspenTech

IP21, Syntex IMPACT and others)

Desktop IntelaTrac clients

• IntelaTrac Procedure Builder: Desktop

application for configuring and scheduling

field procedures and data collection tasks

• IntelaTrac Auditor Plus: Desktop

application for viewing the status of field

rounds, exceptions and notes

• IntelaTrac Web Report Manager: Web

client that allows users to view and

configure web based reports

Mobile IntelaTrac client

Mobile IntelaTrac: Windows Mobile client

that provides a “best in class” browser style

user interface for IntelaTrac procedures and

data collection tasks on mobile devices

Typical configuration

Mobile devices and peripherals

IntelaTrac supports a broad selection

of Windows Mobile based handheld

computers from Motorola/Symbol, Intermec,

Bartec and others. Supported peripherals

include; RFID and barcode readers, vibration

probes, temperature guns and wireless

communication devices.


Plant operational excellence at

Infineum thanks to Wonderware

IntelaTrac

In a nutshell ...

Goals

• Increase plant’s availability by

anticipating any potentially damaging

situations

• Optimise operators’ efficiency and

reliability during inspection activity

• Limit production downtimes to

scheduled maintenance only

Challenges

• The proximity of the plants to

inhabited areas makes it essential for

the sites to be safe and reliable at all

times

• Detection of critical indicators, e.g.

vibrations or the presence of foreign

particles, which automatic instruments

do not usually detect effectively

• Maximise the value of the time and

experience of the field operators

Results

• The Wonderware solution has enabled

the plant to achieve a plant availability

factor of over 90%

• The system has allowed the

operational procedures for visual

inspections of equipment to be

optimised and standardised, thanks

to the removal of paper reports and

the intuitive nature of the handheld

devices

• Wonderware IntelaTrac’s features now

allow operators to identify potential

problems which were previously

neglected, thus avoiding the need for

any emergency intervention

Vado Ligure, Italy – Every time we start the

car, our gaze falls almost without fail to

the fuel gauge, since fuel is the essential

element for making a vehicle run. We only

think about oil when the indicator light

comes on and we rarely stop to think about

the additives that help optimise engine

function. And yet, engine oil and additives

are fundamental elements in ensuring that

the cars and other means of transport we

use to travel around everyday are working

properly.

The production of these additives for

lubricant oils is the core business of

the Infineum Group. The company was

established ten years ago through the

merger of Paramins (the additives division

of what was then Exxon Chemical) and Shell

Additives. In Italy, the factory in Vado Ligure

(near Savona) is the Infineum Group’s main

European supply centre for additives in

lubricant oils.

Human supervision in an automated industry

When working in the petrochemical sector,

it becomes essential to combine safety

and productivity by anticipating potentially

damaging situations. In addition, unforeseen

problems have immediate and financially

Plant operational excellence at Infineum thanks to Wonderware IntelaTrac


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significant repercussions for production and

therefore, to the business.

Inspections using the Manufacturing

Efficiency Index, carried out by management

in the years following the merger showed an

average plant availability of 80%. This is not

an acceptable value for a highly automated

firm looking to the future.

In response to this, Infineum launched the

Global Manufacturing Excellence Program

in 2004, with the aim of maximising plant

reliability, achieving availability of over

90% and limiting production downtimes to

scheduled maintenance only. Efforts have

therefore been concentrated on two specific

fronts: preventative maintenance and

operational management.

In this context, it is easy to understand the

importance of maintenance at large scale

plants. Seemingly less important, however, is

the periodic monitoring of the plant carried

out by field operations personnel.

However, these professionals, thanks

to their regular rounds, are in fact the

people who know the site best. They are

able to recognise abnormal or potentially

dangerous situations that are not detected

by plant instruments.

The plant’s production process is constantly

monitored by electronic instruments and

detects any deviation from the ideal working

parameters. All this information is fed back

to the DCS in real time. However, certain

specific factors such as noise, vibrations or

the presence of dirt or small internal leaks,

are not efficiently measured or detected by

automatic instruments.

Installing additional measuring

instrumentation would lead to higher

costs and could overload the DCS. Human

supervision therefore, remains fundamentally

important even in an industry that is

becoming more and more automated.

Traditionally, operators use paper for

reporting even though it is prone to

transcription errors. These reports then

had to be transferred manually, therefore

increasing the amount of time required to

obtain useful information. Moreover, some

inspections are not carried out from the

correct location, thus limiting the accuracy of

the observations.

Collecting critical operational information quickly and efficiently

As part of the Global Manufacturing

Excellence Program to increase plant

availability and optimise operators’ work,

the Infineum Group decided to equip its

staff with devices capable of collecting

critical operational information in a quick

and efficient manner. The group needed to

identify a reliable tool that optimises direct

inspection activities.

This was not a simple search, since each

plant has its own particular features. This

makes it impossible to standardise the

inspection processes. The whole search was

made even more complicated due to the

regulations in each country.

For this reason, it was necessary to start by

establishing a new method of inspection

procedures. The operators themselves were

directly involved in this task, leveraging their

specific experience to identify the correct

steps.

The organisational planning also required

the adoption of instruments that will enable

operators to work optimally so that they

could concentrate on their field of expertise

Infineum tested multiple solutions, but most

of them ended up being unsuitable to the

complexities of the plant’s production. An

intense software selection process began,

intended to identify a single platform

capable of adapting to the specific needs of

all production plants.

At the end of this search, only two products

were found to fulfil these requirements. Even

when narrowed down, the choice was still

complicated since the success of the whole

project depended on the selected platform.

“As we were faced with two possibilities,”

explained Enrico Bertossi, Infineum’s Global

Manufacturing Excellence Program Advisor,

“the real and concrete references presented

by the System Integrator, Rex, played a

crucial role in the decision-making process.”

Another factor was the need to achieve

integration with SAP, the business

system Infineum uses for planning plant

maintenance operations. The only tool

able to meet these requirements was

Wonderware IntelaTrac, the mobile

workforce and decision support system by

Invensys Operations Management.

This solution is designed to enable workflow,

procedural and general task management

activities required to achieve reliable

operations. These capabilities are enhanced

by the tool’s key feature: allowing on-site

operators to input information and receive

support at any location within the plant,

without the need of a physical connection.

The decision was made easier by the fact

that - “IntelaTrac was priced less than the

other supplier,” said Bertossi.

Staff approval of IntelaTrac usability

“All our expectations were confirmed

immediately after the application

deployment. We were able to obtain the

approval of all system users after only 6

months of development,” said Mauro

Tassistro, Infineum’s Applications Team

Leader in Italy.

Tassistro himself has an overall view of the

whole project, since the system architecture

is centralised in Italy, but has continuous

connection to the plants in France, Germany,

North America and Singapore.

These plants present extremely different

situations in terms of both production and

staff operating methods. However, the

approval of users, who appreciated the ease-

of-use and maintainability of the system, was

one of the critical factors in choosing the

IntelaTrac based monitoring system.


Field operators previously used paper forms

for reporting during their rounds. This was

difficult, especially during adverse weather

conditions. By contrast, Wonderware

IntelaTrac installed on a handheld device is

simple and intuitive, allowing operators to

concentrate more on their traditional tasks.

As an added benefit, the integration with

RFID technology means data relating to a

specific observation can only be input when

the operator is in the correct position. This

procedure prevents errors. In addition, the

practical use of the IntelaTrac interface

made these operators really appreciate the

technology being developed, since they

understood the benefit for their day-to-day

work.

“The decision to involve users from the

very start of the project has enhanced the

advantages provided by an innovative tool

like IntelaTrac,” emphasised Tassistro.

“Staff approval is the result of the solution’s

usability in the plants. In addition,

installation was completed in just a few

months, therefore minimising the impact

on staff operations and avoiding any

interference with production,” confirmed

Bertossi.

Nothing escapes Wonderware IntelaTrac

“Using IntelaTrac has enabled the plant to

achieve a plant availability factor of over

90%. It has integrated perfectly with the

other innovations added to our equipment,”

said Tassistro.

The platform developed by Invensys

Operations Management has allowed the

identification of certain situations, usually

overlooked, which could have potentially

led to the progressive deterioration of

some pieces of equipment that would

subsequently need emergency maintenance

intervention.

Finally, the use of inspection support tools

has also increased on-site operators’ sense

of responsibility, as they feel more involved

in ensuring that the entire plant is run

properly and correctly.

Plant operational excellence at Infineum thanks to Wonderware IntelaTrac


From labour worker to performance managerSimon Windust, Invensys

Introduction

The introduction of automation control

throughout the years has been partially

justified through lower personnel costs.

As repetitive operations were completed

accurately and routinely using process

control equipment, the need for manual

operators was removed. However, this

also meant the knowledge of the process,

methods to improve and issues to overcome

were gradually reduced with the removal

of each operator. As each operator was

dissociated from the overall operation

of the business or part of any collective

responsibility to improve productivity, the

understanding of the effect of losing key

personnel was not matched to the effect on

the business.

Advances in communications and network

technology have presented all roles

within an organisation with vast arrays of

data. These data must be appropriately

summarised and assessed to allow agile

business operations across multiple plant

and geographical areas. Furthermore,

businesses must quickly react to external

issues in real time, understand the affect

on production processes and make correct

decisions.

The business driver

When an operation is performing within

defined boundaries, everyone is satisfied,

but when problems arise, large financial

losses can occur. Therefore, the optimal

solution and how it can directly affect the

business bottom-line must be understood.

In addition, the ability to capitalise on

opportunities as they occur and provide

prompt action allows individuals to

positively affect the overall performance

of the business. For example, the ability to

defer maintenance and prevent operations

problems while safely running the business.

Therefore, a need to provide appropriate

information to individuals is required to

increase their contribution and involvement

within the overall business. This creates an

improved working environment, encourages

team spirit and increases an individual’s

performance.

However, the required information varies for

each individual and must be presented in a

precise manner with options and associated

risks. The overall business driver is to:

Improve the supply of innovative and

consistent product quality

Supply the required quantities of product in

the correct location and in a timely manner

to satisfy demand

Deliver product at a competitive price while

maintaining effective margins and respecting

safety and environmental requirements

The barriers our clients face

Today, there is a need to allow each

individual’s role to contribute to the benefit

of the business. This is limited by:

• Confusing data

• Limited knowledge

• Inconsistent information

• External influences

Confusing data

• Inconsistent forms of existing data

provided by disparate devices are

distributed throughout the organisation to

physically different locations

• Data is presented with no key identifier so

as data grows exponentially it becomes

irrelevant or more confusing

• User Interfaces that are difficult to work

• Difficult to find the valuable data

• Poorly grouped data that is not easily

understood

• Navigation that requires time and adds

further confusion

Limited knowledge

• Understanding how to use the data is

dependent upon a user’s background and

inherent knowledge of the process

• If data is not time consistent, the operator

action may be incorrect

• Lack of consistent and high-level

knowledge throughout the plant to advise

individuals on their actions

Inconsistent information

• Different legacy automation and hardware

systems

• Legacy applications that are not replaced

within the business and operations

environment

• Complicated report routing that does not

deliver to the correct personnel within the

organisation

• Inability to identify the point of no return,

adding additional cost to out-of-spec

product

• Unstructured capture of batch data that

provides additional cost

External influences


• Unaware of today’s technological

possibilities

• Engineering mindset does not empower

people, only places them within

structured boxes

• Labour unions limiting the flexibility of

personnel

• Unclear decision rights that limit

individual’s decision boundaries

• Tradition and organisational inertia to

flexible workforce

• Existing work cultures that must be

aligned and evolved as mergers and

roll-ups occur

Clients’ ideal state related to this driver

This new way of doing business allows

operations to make decisions based on

profitability not expediency and provides

a total alignment of objectives within the

enterprise from top to bottom.

There is a need to reduce decision time

to match incoming events and allow an

individual to be in control of the operation.

This can be provided by:

• Ability to present summarised data that is

appropriate to the individual’s role within

the company. For example:

� Forecast trends (instead of unknown

future “events”)

� Context with targets and constraints

(instead of additional numbers)

� Better comparisons of client,

operations and maintenance schedules

� Better comparisons across shifts and

sites

� Personalisation of information and

contextual to role and skill set

• Data must be concise and present the

optimum next step to the product/

process/solution. Timely information

logically grouped for quick assimilation.

• A go/no go or pass/fail indication with

the ability to drill-down and investigate

further if required

• Recommendation of available options

for the next step and the risks/rewards

associated with each option

• Unified information model across the

enterprise that enables knowledge

sharing (e.g. industry Wiki) and provides

online training

• Clarification of an individual’s decision

boundaries and where/who to delegate if

outside of their defined authority

Summary

Individuals can contribute to the success

of the business when presented with

information appropriate to their role and the

best way to use that data. The aim is to:

• Provide correct decisions

• Within the appropriate time frame, and

• At a lower risk

This contributes to a performance culture

that creates world-class excellence and adds

to shareholder value.

From labour worker to performance manager


Empowering people to contribute with DPMDPM or Dynamic Performance Management / Measurement is a system

of measurement and a concept that extends business performance

measurement beyond traditional accounting to the realities of real-time

production. It was developed after more than 300 CEOs underlined the

inability of their offi ce systems to provide the information required to

address problems in a timely manner.

Capitalising on the fact that access to enterprise–wide information

is no longer a problem, DPM focuses on supplying individuals the

exact information they need to monitor and adjust their activities

and performance in terms of the company’s profi t-making strategy

and that means stepping across the artifi cial boundaries of ERP, MES

and automation. Why? Because CFOs need some production and

fi nancial information as well as a good reason if they are to authorise

or veto the installation of new plant. Because production managers

need scheduling, customer and production information if they are to

optimise throughput. Because production personnel need maintenance

information and some fi nancial feedback if they are to remain profi table

and competitive.

DPM precisely defi nes the critical performance measurement information

that IT must provide to support decisions at all levels of the organisation.

There’s no more guesswork as to what people may want to know or

swamping them with information ‘just in case’. DPM can also reduce

measurements to the common denominator of money – including real-

time profi t and loss. This provides personnel with a measurement of their

performance in terms of a measurement unit that’s real to everyone and

encourages them to better “own” their processes – just like professional

knowledge workers are supposed to do.

The proof of the effectiveness of DPM can be seen in the following

success story from SASOL.



Energy and electricity savings progressed and improved throughout the second and third months, saving R3,5 million in the first 2 months.

Goals

• Monitor energy costs and usage in real time to better optimise the

energy within the plant

• Identify the amount of energy needed to meet internal requirements

and minimise its impact on the local electrical grid.

Challenges

• Energy costs and electricity usage has a very large impact on

business performance


• Dynamic Performance Measurement

Results

• Savings of 6% in energy and 4% in electricity costs within the first

month

• Saved R3,5 million within the first 2 months from two out of the five

targeted plants and over R8,7 million during the course of the year

• Over 2% reduction in variable costs associated with energy

feedstocks and electricity


With increased cost pressures due to a

reduction in some of its commodity-based

business, the Sasol Corporation required

a new solution to minimise costs. Sasol

introduced a new technology within the

plant environment to manage its energy

costs and usage due to its large impact

on business performance. This new

solution must monitor energy costs and

usage in real time, allowing management,

operators, and engineers to better optimise

the energy within the plant, identify the

amount of energy needed to meet internal

requirements, and minimise its impact on

the local electrical grid.

Producing steam for internal and external consumption

The Sasol plant draws process water from

a nearby river to produce steam in two

steam stations and an automatic thermal

reformer (ATR) area that is used for internal

and external consumer consumption. The

process water is treated in one plant and

mixed with condensate that is recovered

from additional plants. Previously, steam

demand for external customers was

extremely high, especially for customers

involved in coal reformation. During

which, maximising output was the key to

the profitability strategy. However, as the

demand for coal decreased and imported

natural gas increased, steam demand

declined, shifting the strategy from

maximising output to minimising cost. The

price of steam for internal and external

customers is based on an algorithm that

approximates a fair market price at current

conditions. Steam stations are contractually

obligated to operate with 160 tons per

hour of spare steam, which is approximately

equal to the steam output from one boiler. If

plants cannot meet the demand for steam,

they must reduce supply to the electrical

generation customers, who buy electricity

directly from the grid. Excessive power

usage from the grid can be costly.

Collaboration

The Invensys Business Performance Services

consulting team worked closely with Sasol

personnel (from the Sasol One Site in

Sasolburg, South Africa) to develop real-time

dynamic performance measurements (DPM)

at Steam Plants 1 and 2. To determine the

underlying real-time performance measures

and calculate costs and profits, DPMs and

real-time financial metrics were created

for each process unit and area within the

two plants. Management and operator

dashboards, that utilise DPMs and real-time

financial data, were also created to provide

management, operations and engineering

with critical information in real time to

enable better and more informed business

decisions.

Initially, the consulting team conducted a

plant operation and strategy audit. They

interviewed Sasol personnel from all aspects

of plant operations, starting with plant

managers and continuing with the operators

and other pertinent personnel in the

operation. Invensys’ structured methodology

was used to determine the correct measures

of performance and to break down key

plant performance measures into lower-

level functional entities so that they can

be managed effectively. The component

solutions were then recombined into an

overall structure.

The Invensys-measured process helped to

reconcile differences in how raw materials

consumption was measured between the

engineering and accounting staffs. The

engineering production division measured

coal consumption using mechanical devices

(based on the number of revolutions

made by a wheel flow meter), while the

accounting division based its measurements

on weighing devices at the mine and silo

measurements that resulted in significant

weight differences. Therefore, reconciliation

was required to arrive at a working solution.

The process was also used to help identify a

water source cost that had previously been

incorrectly allocated.

Automation and IT systems

Sasol has made a significant investment in

its automation and IT infrastructure. Each

steam station has a dedicated Distributed

Control System (DCS) for control,

historisation and graphical interface. At the

start of the project, each DCS was found

to have some unused capacity. The unused

computing capacity in each DCS provided

Sasol an opportunity to host applications

beyond the basic process control such as

implementation and execution host for

real-time performance measurements and

business intelligence feedback.

The historian server collects critical data

from each DCS and other production layer

systems. Most connections between the

DCS and IT layer are through bi-directional

communications. Process data moves

from the DCS to the historian server and

is then transmitted back to the DCS for

management-level reports and dashboards.

Monthly financial reports provide an overall

representation of the steam generation

Figure 1: Real-time business intelligence / financial system



business and the entire Infrachem Syngas

steam and utilities businesses. These

financial reports are generated using

Hyperion Financial Management reporting

capabilities that utilise key financial

data from various sources. Managerial,

operations, and maintenance reports utilise

input from the operational data store (ODS)

system, SAP, and other manually entered

sources to provide custom reports to meet

current requirements. Daily, production

supervisors use these reports to review the

production performance from the previous

day.

Development of DPMs

Modelled in the DCS, DPMs were developed

for each individual boiler, steam station, and

the steam generation. Three station-level

DPMs were developed: steam cost, steam

quality, and production rate. Each individual

boiler is required to produce the lowest-

cost steam at the proper pressure and

temperature specifications, maintain reliable

production, while managing production

rates. For each boiler, the variable steam

generating cost, including labour, consists of

four major components: coal, electricity, fuel

as well as and oil and water. Additionally,

emission levels were monitored and

improved to enhance Sasol’s environmental

footprint.

Maintenance and human resources metrics

Additionally, the steam stations management

rolled out a maintenance initiative that was

designed to improve the availability of key

assets and avoid emergency shutdowns.

This was accomplished by improved

planning, increased predictive-reactive

maintenance ratios, setting proper priorities

for maintenance activities, and reduced

cost. Real-time performance measurements

focused on the following within the

maintenance area:

• Reactive-predictive maintenance ratio

• Boiler availability

• Emergency maintenance reaction time

(the time from when a breakdown

occurred to when the repair was

completed and the equipment was back

in operation)

• Maintenance schedule deviations

(important for improving the maintenance

planning process

Implementing DPMs

DPM algorithms, real-time financial models

and unit levels were implemented in the

two DCSs. Using existing plant-level assets

for implementation; cost factors on the

plant floor can be tracked in real time. The

execution of these algorithms typically

takes place in the microprocessors in the

DCS. These algorithms are executed at a

frequency that is in close proximity to the

cycle time of the process, with the historical

collection performed at a similar frequency.

Unit-level metrics are then aggregated

at the station and plant levels using the

functionality of the historian. The totalling

can be performed at various periods,

including the shift, day and month.

Figure 2: Real-time financial information flows through to SAP


Real-time financial data with allocated costs

are tracked using the ValuMax activity-based

costing system and provide an immediate

representation of product costs across the

portfolio. The same real-time financial data

is projected to eventually be integrated

into SAP as the fidelity and applicability of

the data is better understood. The figure

below provides a general overview of the

real-time business intelligence/finance

system for Steam Stations 1 and 2. Strategic

performance measurement, operational

KPIs, and Real-Time Finance (RTA) models

were developed and processed in the

existing automation system.

Developing a baseline

Once the performance measurement

models were installed, they were historicised

to provide a performance profile of each

unit, and station. This baseline enabled

an economic comparison of boilers

under various conditions. Using improved

procedures and training, improvement

initiatives, projects, and operational

improvements can be financially tracked

and validated. Creating this type of baseline

enables the development of data for

financial and accounting validation.

Training Sasol operators and engineers

to think and act strategically are key

opportunities for improved results.

Dashboards provide operations personnel

clear and simple feedback to individual

impact on Sasol’s business performance.

Integrating this type of strategy is helping

to improve Sasol’s business and build the

knowledge and skill base of its operators

and engineers. Providing operations

personnel with a tool that provides feedback

as to which boiler produces the least

expensive incremental steam enhances

performance of each steam station.

For example, operators can make spare and

spinning steam decisions based on economic

information. Spinning is the available spare

steam capacity when the feed rate on an idle

mill is increased. Spare steam is the amount

of potential steam available by starting the

third mill of a boiler running on just two

mills. Operators increase steam output on an

instantaneous or immediate basis according

to demand changes.

Positive results

As Sasol’s division continues to improve its

operation and drive business value for the

company, it will acquire new products and

process technologies to help achieve their

goals. Sasol Infrachem management views

development of its employees as one of the

company’s most critical tasks. Government

regulations and key personnel nearing

retirement underscore the importance of

skills and knowledge development.

The DPM methodology brings together

various functional areas (such as accounting,

engineering, management, operations, and

maintenance) to discuss the overall business

– seeing it in a holistic view. This type of

interaction creates understanding across

business functions, enables proper strategic

performance measures to be developed

across functions, and helps create new

and valuable business processes aimed at

improving the bottom line.

Invensys’ Real-Time Energy Usage

Monitoring Solution was a key tool for

helping Sasol in achieving positive results

on this project. Producing steam in Steam

Stations 1 and 2 resulted in a 6% savings in

energy and 4% savings in electricity costs

within the first month (approximately R2

million savings in the first month). Energy

and electricity savings progressed and

improved throughout the second and third

months, saving R3,5 million in the first 2

months from two out of the five-targeted

plants. The annualised direct benefit of

this project was initially expected to be a

2% reduction in variable costs associated

with energy feedstocks and electricity. The

results have far exceeded these estimates.

In collaboration with Invensys, Sasol will

incorporate future business information with

process data and identify other areas of

improvement through advanced multivariate

statistical analysis, continuous improvement

programmes such as Six Sigma, and other

business value-adding activities.



Situation awareness – vital for a sentient enterpriseDenis du Buisson – editor, Protocol Magazine

Introduction

Situation awareness has many complex

definitions but it seems that it all comes

down to being able to answer these

questions:

• Do you know what’s really going on?

• What can affect the outcome?

• Are you prepared to cope with what could

happen?

A blinkered horse racing down the track

is aware of the commands of the jockey

on his back and the horses immediately

in front of him. The blinkers are there to

focus his attention on these main facts only

so that the objective of winning the race

can be achieved without distraction. The

jockey, on the other hand, is aware of the

betting odds, which horses are coming up

behind, which horses he should pass, the

weather, the condition of the track and the

responsiveness of the horse when prompted

to go faster. In this simplistic example, the

jockey is more aware of the situation in

which they find themselves than the horse.

However, it’s important to note that the

jockey is an active participant to the process

of racing. He doesn’t leave the horse to his

own devices just because the horse knows

what to do. If the jockey just sat there and

didn’t drive the process, there’s a good

chance that the pair wouldn’t win any races –

after all, there’s nothing in it for the horse.

Situation awareness is one of the critical

components of decision-making (figure

1) and highlights the importance of not

wearing blinkers and focusing only on a

narrow field of view. This is especially true

of people operating complex systems in

the domains of air traffic control, nuclear-

based power generation and advanced

manufacturing and mining systems to name

a few. Low situation awareness can cause

Figure 1: Components of the decision-making process. The result of actions taken become part of

the decision-maker’s experience to be repeated in the future if successful or discarded if not.


catastrophic plant failures and even loss

of life. In a review of commercial aviation

accidents, 88 percent of those with human

error involved a problem with situation

awareness (Endsley 1994).

Of course, there’s nothing wrong with focus.

When former world chess champion Gary

Kasparov was planning his next move,

there was nothing else but focus. But at the

same time he had to be aware of dozens of

possible consequences of that move as well

as his opponent’s many likely countermoves.

So his situational awareness of the job at

hand was extremely high yet he probably

couldn’t describe the decor in the room.

Situation awareness makes the difference

between being “on top of it” or blaming

circumstances for failure. More importantly,

it makes the difference between mindless

automation and sentient control.

Situation awareness and production automation

The manual control of processes demands

the full attention of operators since they

have to be ever mindful of what’s happening

where and when. As automation crept

in, operators were increasingly distanced

from the production processes in their

care. Today, fully-automated processes

need virtually no operator involvement at

all, with the result that operators trust the

automation systems implicitly and become

complacent. And then something goes

wrong.

A PLC will keep a valve open to fill a tank

to its prescribed upper limit unaware that

the tank in question has sprung a leak. An

operator looking at the HMI screen will see

that the valve is logically open because the

tank isn’t full – so everything is OK. At this

point, there’s no difference between the

operator and the PLC – until liquid starts

sloshing around the operator’s feet.

By adding sensors, the PLC could be

provided with more situational awareness

and would therefore become a more

valuable asset. So, situation awareness

involves the broadening of one’s scope

of observation and humans who have this

ability are more valuable to the company

than those who don’t.

Computers do what they’re told and

watching them do it without extracting

valuable information can be a mindless

and futile occupation. Humans can do what

computers can’t do and that’s to observe the

broader operational landscape and to make

decisions based on a multitude of variables.

Running a plant doesn’t mean only aiming

towards one objective. A plant will have

numerous objectives that all have to

be achieved simultaneously and in an

optimum manner – and the objectives will

be changing dynamically. The only entity

that’s ever been able to solve a multiple

objective optimisation problem is a human.

So, the Lights Out Manufacturing approach,

which advocates total automation and

the elimination of humans, will have to

find another way of optimising multiple,

simultaneous objectives. We’ve been trying

to eliminate operators for years – now’s the

time to empower them.

As we all know, humans are a company’s

most valuable assets but they are rarely

empowered to use their natural talents

which have been suppressed by an

abundance of automation. That’s not to say

that automation is bad – on the contrary,

it’s what keeps us in the 21st century. But

the increasing dependence on automation

systems and their recommendations has led

operators and others to become passive

observers of process control rather than

active participants.

PLCs or SCADA systems can’t smell burning

insulation or see smoke – but a mobile

workforce can. Computers can’t reconcile

production capability with market demands

– but production managers can.

It’s been shown that automation systems

designed so as to involve a greater level

of human interaction are preferable to

fully-automated systems and that operators

were better able to assume manual control

when needed. This increased level of

participation requires that operators have

Figure 2: Example of increased situational awareness from the point of view of an operator on the shop floor.

Situation awareness – vital for a sentient enterprise


an increased knowledge of the processes

being monitored as well as the automation

systems that control them. They should

be encouraged to build what-if scenarios

and to plan what to do when they observe

certain trends or events in as well as outside

the scope of normal monitoring. Much of

this can be done with scripted workfl ows

but a lot more will eventually be compiled

as a result of scripting successful corrective

actions taken on the spur of the moment by

alert operators who could think outside the

box (and for which they should be justifi ably

rewarded).

In a way, operators are showing this

initiative every day when they evaluate the

importance of alarms. A multitude of false

alarms will lead operators to mistrust the

system and take matters into their own

hands. This means prioritising alarms and

that, in turn, leads to thinking about the

consequences of temporarily ignoring

certain alarms while attending to those that

indicate real safety problems or production

downtime.

This kind of initiative and situation awareness

can lead to far greater things when applied

to process improvement across the

enterprise.

Situation awareness and the business

In the 1970s and 1980s, there was a

little-known management style called

“Management by Walking About” (MWA).

At the time, I was director of sales as

well as research and development at a

South African company involved with the

development of CAD/CAM systems. I

We are what we repeatedly do; excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.

regularly tracked the performance of the

sales personnel against their targets while

at the same time designing functionality

for the software we were developing – but

that was my “day job”. I also made it my

job to periodically and casually talk to the

sales people in their environment rather

than in my offi ce. This provided a wealth of

information that would never have come

to light during sales meetings and that

underscored their needs to be competitive

in the marketplace. I would relay this to the

R&D team who would immediately start

making provisions for these enhancements

in their production schedules while also

making me aware of their needs outside

of formal R&D meetings. Eventually, we

dispensed with meetings altogether and

enjoyed a 67% market share – all due to

humans being able to juggle and evaluate

more variables simultaneously than a

machine and being more aware of everyday

realities than with traditional management

approaches.

I didn’t know it at the time but I was

practising situation awareness and it really

worked.

Management is not immune from situation

UNawareness. Looking at reports and graphs

on a computer screen all day is all very well

provided all the required information is

available, contextualised and presented in a

useful format that will lead to decisions and

actions. The proliferation of smart phones

and tablets has made access to information

incredibly simple. No one can hide behind

the excuse of “I didn’t know that.” But

computer screens rarely tell the whole story.

If they did, then why did we have a global

fi nancial crisis in 2008 which we’re still

trying to put behind us? Computer screens,

tablets and smart phone are regarded

as an end result by spectators but simply

decision-facilitating tools by participators

and originators.

How many fi nancial managers are aware of

the inner workings and needs of their factory

fl oors and on what basis do they sanction

or veto a purchase request? How do

accountants account for loss of production?

After all, anyone in charge of the company’s

money should be intimately aware of how

that money is created in the fi rst place and

realise that money is only a by-product of

creativity. The lack of situation awareness has

turned many capable people into spectators

rather than contributors of solutions and

ideas.

Conclusion

If we humans are not going to contribute

more than computers, what’s to become

of us? Computers may be programmed to

beat us at chess or automate entire factories

but they can’t independently decide on

anything. That’s our speciality. But we can’t

make informed decisions without being

aware of all the circumstances, parameters

and consequences of these decisions. It’s

only a high degree of situational awareness

at all times that allows us to make the best

decisions and originate the best ideas in an

increasingly complex world. The alternative

is to be replaced by a laptop with the

situational awareness of a sofa.


The Human-Machine InterfaceHMIs are the primary means of

interaction between humans and

expensive, often dangerous machinery

which churn out the company’s wealth. But,

various HMI implementations will not all obey the

same display rules which makes the migration of

operators between systems diffi cult if not dangerous

and contributes to lengthier training cycles. It’s with this in

mind that Bill Hollifi eld introduces a new paradigm for HMIs

that will improve performance while increasing the situational

awareness of operators.

We then take a look at how the security and access control of Lonmin’s

extensive SCADA assets have been dramatically improved using biometrics

before seeing how a properly designed alarm management system can relieve

operator stress and improve process management.


The high-performance HMI

Bill R Hollifi eld, PAS Principal Alarm Management and HMI Consultant

The high performance HMI by Bill Hollifi eld

was reprinted from the November/

December 2012 issue of InTech magazine by

permission, Copyright © ISA 2012.

About the author

Bill R. Hollifi eld (bhollifi [email protected]),

PAS Principal Alarm Management

and HMI Consultant, is a 37-year

industry veteran with international

experience in all aspects of alarm

management and HMI development

for the petrochemical, power

generation, pipeline, and mining

industries.

Bill is co-author of The Alarm

Management Handbook, The

High Performance HMI Handbook,

and The Electric Power Research

Institute (EPRI) guideline on Alarm

Management. He is a member of

the American Petroleum Institute’s

API RP-1167 Alarm Management

Recommended Practice committee,

the ISA18 Alarm Management

committee, the ISA101 HMI

committee, and the Engineering

Equipment and Materials Users

Association (EEMUA) Industry Review

Group. Bill is a regular presenter on

these topics in such venues as API,

ISA, and Electric Power symposiums.

He has a BSME from Louisiana Tech

University and an MBA from the

University of Houston.

Process graphics to maximise operator effectiveness

• HMI improvement is justifi ed

by giving operators the tools to

successfully run the plant.

• Information needs to be displayed in

meaningful and actionable ways rather

than as “raw data.”

• Learn new concepts to improve HMI

design.

Almost three decades ago, we control

engineers were given a new task for

which we were ill-prepared. We installed

control systems with the capability to display

real-time process control graphics for the

operator. But the screens were blank and we

were responsible to fi ll them up.

We had no available guidelines as to

what constituted a “good” graphic. So,

we did the best we could with what we

knew—which wasn’t much! As a result, we

set in place a low-performance paradigm

of what a control system human-machine

interface (HMI) should look like, and inertia

has done the rest. Mostly for convenience,

we chose to depict the process as a P&ID

view covered in live numbers. We stuck with

that paradigm even as graphic capabilities of

DCS/SCADA systems improved,

mostly migrating rather than redesigning

the displays. Now, tens of thousands

of operators throughout the world are

controlling multi-billion dollar processes by

looking at primitive cartoons designed at a

time when we really did not know what we

were doing.

Poorly performing HMIs have been cited

as signifi cant contributing factors to major

accidents. The principles for designing

proper process graphics are now available.

A high-performance HMI (HPHMI) has many

advantages, including improved operator

situation awareness and process surveillance,

better abnormal situation detection and

response and reduced training time for new

operators. Many industrial companies have

graphic improvement efforts underway.

High performance displays depict

information. Information is data, in context,

made useful. HPHMI graphics show not only

the process value, but where it is relative

to “what’s good.” Abnormal conditions

are designed to stand out clearly. Colour is

used consistently, effectively, and sparingly.

Graphics are designed with a proper

hierarchy.


Displaying information

In figure 1, much money has been spent on

the instrumentation. But can you answer the

simple question, “Is this process running at

peak efficiency, or very poorly?” To know that,

one must have specific training and months

of experience in normal and abnormal

situations. The operator must compare

each number to a memorised mental map

acquired through experience and upsets.

This is a difficult cognitive process. Most

operators have well over a thousand such

numbers and status indications spread out

over dozens of graphics. Detecting abnormal

conditions is difficult.

In the figure 2 depiction, a compressor’s

instruments are displayed in a different

fashion. The normal or desired range of

each value is clearly depicted using the light

blue range. The value’s proximity to alarm

ranges and automated interlock thresholds

is shown. (We normally expect operators to

also memorise which sensors are

interlock initiators). Values in alarm are

depicted with a redundantly-coded alarm

priority indicator.

With a single two-second glance at this

bank of properly designed analogue

indicators, the operators can tell if any values

are outside of the normal range, by how

much, and the proximity of the measurement

to both alarms and interlock activation.

Humans intuitively understand analogue

depictions. The abnormally high discharge

temperature shown is easy to detect even

though it is not yet in alarm. Alarm

conditions stand out.

By coding information into the display,

the operator can effectively scan

dozens of values in a few seconds. This

supports surveillance of the process and

early detection of abnormalities. We

do not wait for an alarm to indicate a

problem. The best knowledge of desirable

operating conditions is coded into the

display and in view all the time, not buried

in written procedures. Variability in the

proficiency and knowledge of individual

Figure 1: A typical 1990s graphic screen based on a P&ID

Figure 2: Analogue depiction of information



operators is reduced. Operator training

time is also significantly reduced, since

important knowledge is not acquired hit-or-

miss through experience. This is important

because most companies will lose well

over half of their experienced operators

and engineers in the next 10 years.

Use and abuse of colour

It is important to eliminate the common

overuse and misuse of colour. One

important principle is that colour alone

is not used as the sole discriminator of

an important status condition. The same

colours designated for alarms must not

also be used for other trivial purposes,

minimising their significance.

The most common and worst

colour principle violation is the red

(off)—green (on) equipment paradigm.

The power industry reverses this, with red

meaning energised. Who is right? Neither!

Figure 3 indicates poor colour-coding vs.

proper practice.

The red-green colouring shown

is (improperly) the only difference

depicting equipment status. Since red is

usually used as an alarm colour, it should

not be used for something as trivial as

depicting an “off” condition. Being “off”

is usually a normal and appropriate status;

a process running normally should not be

showing red. Brightness coding is a better

practice—imagine that a light bulb is inside

the pump. A status word is placed next

to the equipment to ensure clarity. This

paradigm can be usefully extended into

tables and other depictions.

Alarms are commonly indicated

by simply changing the colour of a

process value or its background, a

poor practice. Alarm conditions should

be shown by a redundantly coded

(shape, colour, text) element indicating

the alarm’s presence and priority. A

click on the alarm indicator can call

up its rationalisation information.

Alarm colours are not used for non-

alarm purposes. Bright colours are

used to draw attention to abnormal

situations, not show normal ones. A gray

background and muted colours minimise

screen glare and reflection, facilitating a

brightly lit control room. A colour palette

and the proper uses of each colour

are determined in advance. HPHMI is

not either eliminating colour or just

converting graphics to greyscale.

Graphic hierarchy

Displays should be designed in a

hierarchy providing progressive exposure of

detail. Displays designed from a stack of

P&IDs will not have this; they will be “flat”–

Figure 3: A Level 1 Overview display


Figure 4: Depicting status and alarms with redundant coding and proper colour usage

like a computer hard disk with one folder for

all the files.

Hierarchy begins with a Level 1 Process Area

Overview. This is a big picture display

showing the operator’s entire span of

control. It is an overall indicator of how

the process is running. It depicts the

most important information and the key

performance indicators. The Overview is

a good use of a large-format wall screen.

Control interactions are not made from this

display.

A Level 1 Overview display of a large, coal-

fired power plant is shown in figure 3. At a

glance the operator can detect if the various

parts of the process are running well. We

sometimes hear, “But it doesn’t look like a

power plant!” Should your auto instrument

panel look like your engine?

Every process consists of smaller,

separate unit operations. A few

examples might include a compressor,

reactor, pipeline segment, distillation train,

furnace, generator, or feed system. A Level 2

Process Unit display (figure 5) is the primary

graphic for detailed surveillance and control

manipulations. It contains all the information

and controls required to perform most

operator tasks associated with that process

part. This cannot be accomplished by simply

replicating a P&ID. A typical operator might

have about a dozen Level 2 graphics.

Clicking on any value or element brings up

the detailed faceplate for that particular

element, through which adjustments are

made. In this example, the faceplate is

an element appearing in the upper-right

reserved area. Faceplates should not

obscure the primary portion of the graphic.

Two alarms are in effect on this reactor.

Embedded trends with indications of the

desirable range are used in all HPHMI

graphics. Control system “trend on

demand” capability works poorly in actual

practice.

Level 3 Process Unit Detail graphics address

a single piece of equipment or control

scheme. These are used for a detailed

diagnosis of problems. An augmented

P&ID type of depiction is often desirable

for Level 3 displays. Most of the existing

graphics in the world can be considered as

improvable Level 3 graphics.

Level 4 Process Diagnostic displays provide

the most detail of subsystems,

individual sensors, or components.

Screens, such as “Point Detail,” are Level 4.

Developing a hierarchy does not have to

be a complex and expensive effort. For

existing systems, most of the benefits

of HPHMI can be obtained by creating

about 20 new displays—typically a Level

1, a dozen or so Level 2s, and a few new

Abnormal Situation displays. The existing

graphics are designated Level 3. This will be

somewhat inconsistent, but most existing

graphics are already inconsistent. Over

time, the Level 3s can be improved.

There are dozens of additional

depiction improvements and HMI

topics addressed in detail in “The

High Performance HMI Handbook,”

available through ISA Publishing.

Proving these concepts

In 2009, the Electric Power Research

Institute (EPRI) conducted a major test

of these HMI concepts. A report was

produced, “Operator Human Machine

Interface Case Study: The Evaluation

of Existing ‘Traditional’ Operator

Graphics Versus High-Performance Graphics

in a Coal-Fired Power Plant Simulator, ID

1017637.”

The power plant chosen had used a

plant-training simulator for more than

a dozen years. In the test, several

operators detected and resolved various

abnormal scenarios using both their familiar

existing graphics and new, HPHMI graphics.

The HPHMI provided significantly-improved

operator performance in several areas. The

operator’s reaction to the overall test is best

summed up in this quote: “Once you got

used to these new graphics, going back to

the old ones would be hell.”

As an example of the power of

inertia, many plant scenarios require

an immediate half-rate reduction, or

“runback.” Done incorrectly, the plant

can drop to an undesirable zero output.

To accomplish this stressful and difficult

task, operators were trained for a

decade in using their normal graphics

for runback. This involved using a dozen

different screens, some to adjust only

a single item. Prior to this test, it had

not occurred to the plant to design any



special-purpose screens for use during

the runback, containing all the controls

and trends needed for that task. For the

test, a pair of HPHMI runback screens

were created, used, and evaluated as far

superior for runback accomplishment.

The High-Performance HMI work process

There is a proven seven-step

methodology for the development of a

high performance HMI:

• Step 1: Adopt a high performance HMI

philosophy and style guide with proper

principles.

• Step 2: Assess and benchmark

existing graphics against the HMI

philosophy.

• Step 3: Determine specific

performance and goal objectives/

targets for process control, such as safety

parameters, production rate, efficiency,

cost, and quality.

• Step 4: Task analysis identifies

which controls must be monitored

and manipulated to achieve the

performance and goal objectives,

determining the content of each Level 2

and 3 graphic.

• Step 5: Design high performance

graphics, following the HMI philosophy,

addressing the identified tasks.

• Step 6: Install, commission, and provide

training on the new HMI.

• Step 7: Control, maintain and periodically

reassess the HMI performance.

Justification for HMI change

Inertia, not cost, is the primary force

preventing HMI improvement. Operators are

usually on board immediately when shown

examples of HPHMI concepts. They see the

value compared to their existing screens

covered in raw numbers. Surprisingly, the

engineers tend to be the most resistant

to change. Based on actual incident

histories, HPHMI can produce significant

cost savings. The HMI is the primary tool

for the operator to successfully run the

process. The operator must succeed for

the plant to succeed. Alarm systems are

receiving considerable attention but are only

a small part of the operator’s HMI. Rather

than justify creating a good HMI, we would

ask, “Was there a justification for installing

a poor HMI in the first place?” Let’s fix what

is broken.

Conclusion

Our sophisticated control systems

are currently operated via ineffective

and problematic HMIs, designed

without adequate knowledge. Operator

performance can be greatly enhanced

by HMIs reflecting proper principles. A high

performance HMI is practical, achievable

and affordable.

Figure 5: Example Level 2 display of a reactor


Lonmin uses biometrics to secure SCADA access

Goals

• 100% success rate when authorised users log into the InTouch

software.

• Impossible to bypass the security by logging in as someone else.

• Eliminate the need for usernames and passwords

• Auditable trail of users and usage

• Replace the password with a fingerprint template

Challenges

• Keeping pace with Microsoft’s changes in security and developing

a custom-made solution that would merge these changes with

biometric access to InTouch


• Wonderware InTouch HMI/SCADA

• In-house developed solution

Results

• Software savings

• Faster log-ins

• Proper identification of users

• Less admin work

“This project gave us security, improved login, less admin and an audit trail all in one and in a remarkably short time.”

Eduan Marais, MES Application Development Analyst, Lonmin Marikana

Lonmin uses biometrics to secure SCADA access


Most manufacturing and mining operations

could not continue without SCADA

systems that are usually responsible for the

most complex and sensitive parts of their

production processes. While on-line hacking

is always a threat (viz. the Stuxnet virus of

2010), in-house threats are also ever-present

as is the operation of systems by unqualified

or unauthorised personnel. Lonmin took

steps to mitigate these risks.

Lonmin’s Marikana plant is a giant

undertaking by any standards. With well over

20 000 employees and a goal of producing

800 000 oz of platinum in the near future, the

company can’t afford production delays or

mishaps.

Lonmin has always looked for ways of

improving the efficiency of its production

processes by adopting the latest and

best technologies and approaches. The

plant uses dozens of SCADA/HMI as well

as view stations based on Wonderware

InTouch software throughout the facility

and management saw an urgent need to

eliminate unauthorised access to these vital

production assets by replacing InTouch’s

password-based security with fingerprint

recognition technology.

Project goals

• Ensure 100% success rate when

authorised users log into the InTouch

software.

• Users must not be able to bypass the

security by logging in as someone else.

• Eliminate the need for usernames and

passwords which users often swap with

one another leading to potentially

dangerous situations such as unauthorised

access to various functions

• Provide an auditable trail of who used

what and when

• Simplify the logging-in process by

replacing the password with a fingerprint

template. This would also eliminate

the need for resetting passwords and

unlocking accounts.

Challenges

In Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and

earlier versions of the Windows operating

system, services and applications run in the

same session as that started by the first user

who logged onto the console. This session

is called Session 0. With the release of

Windows 7, Microsoft implemented changes

to isolate services from user applications,

making it harder for malicious software to

run with elevated privileges, which would

enable them to do a lot of harm. Doing

this made Windows a much more secure

operating system.

“This, however, meant that we could not

implement the Biometrix intelligence as a

standard Windows service as was requested,

as it would simply not talk to InTouch,” says

Eduan Marais, MES Application Development

Analyst at Lonmin Marikana. “So I developed

the solution in a Windows forms application,

but ran it as if it was a service. It starts as a

minimised task in the taskbar that can’t be

closed, so it is practically invisible, but we still

had the luxury of interfacing with InTouch and

communicating with users via dialogues if

necessary.”

Wonderware allows communication via DDE.

However, DDE is not available to Visual

Studio 2010 anymore. An external driver was

found on the Internet, called nDDE, which

was incorporated into the solution to enable

DDE communication between InTouch and

the fingerprint reader.

“Since the fingerprint reader does not

require a password, we had a problem as

InTouch uses a username and password

for ID authentication,” says Marais. “A

management decision was taken to

standardise on the password. This made

sense because users no longer had the

option to log in via the normal InTouch

login screen, making personal passwords

meaningless. And so the password was reset

to be the same for all users.”

A username is saved to a fingerprint

template on enrolment. Once the user

Lonmin at a glance

Lonmin is one of the world’s largest

primary producers of Platinum Group

Metals (PGMs) which are essential

for many industrial applications,

especially catalytic converters for

the control of internal combustion

engine emissions. PGMs also have a

widespread use in jewellery.

• Lonmin’s operations are based

in the North West and Limpopo

provinces of South Africa and

comprise 14 extraction shafts, 9

concentration plants as well as

extensive smelting and refining

facilities.

• Resources include 175 million troy

ounces of PGMs and 43 million

ounces of reserves

• The number of full time employees

is around 27,800 (year ending 30

September 2011)

• Lonmin has a primary listing on

LSE and the JSE

• 719,000 ounces of platinum in

concentrate (1.436m ounces of

total PGMs) produced and 721,000

ounces of Platinum sold (year

ending 30 September 2011)

“This biometric approach is very secure and surprisingly fast!”

Johan Louw, Automation Specialist, Process Systems, Lonmin Marikana


uses the fingerprint reader to log into the

application, the username associated with

the fingerprint is returned, together with the

standardised password. This is passed to

InTouch via nDDE followed by the normal

ID authentication procedure to log the user

onto InTouch. This all happens in a few

milliseconds.

Implementation

From development to implementation on

the first workstation took 2 months. The

administrators were then trained and users

were scheduled to capture their fingerprints

(a process that takes about 30 seconds per

user). Once the fingerprints were captured,

users were able to continue operations as

normal.

The fingerprint software decrypts the user’s

fingerprint and then verifies it against

the database to return the matching

username. Remote monitoring is possible

via external software such as DAMEWARE.

The fingerprint software will pop up an

error if the authentication fails and anyone

monitoring remotely will be made aware of

the fact.

“Since this application runs in the

background, users do not have to click

anywhere. The application monitors the

fingerprint reader continuously and once

a finger is detected, the software does the

rest,” says Marais. “It’s important to note

that the integration was done in such a way

that no other systems had to change. Proper

research saved us a lot of time, as we did

not fall into the traps that exist with this

type of implementation. This project also

highlighted the fact that IT and production

can work together to implement a solution

that is useful to both.”

Benefits

• Software savings – by developing the

application in-house, savings of around

R1000 per workstation as well as the

elimination of yearly licence fees were

realised

• Faster log-ins – No more typographical

errors causing locked accounts that

must then be unlocked by the system

administrator. Forgotten usernames and

passwords are also no longer an issue

• Proper identification of users – Since

users can no longer use one another’s

Figure 1: The fingerprint encryption process

Figure 2: System topology

usernames and passwords, it is now

possible to know with certainty who was

actually logged in and when. This is also

important when tracing the root cause of

a problem since it is now possible to talk

to the right people who were involved at

the time.

• Less admin work - Since usernames

and passwords are no longer used,

administrators do not have the tedious

task of resetting passwords and unlocking

accounts due to finger trouble

Contents


Why is alarm management required in modern plants?Stan DeVries, Director, Energy Management Solutions, Invensys Operations Management

Introduction

All modern process control systems provide

alarm systems to assist process operators in

managing abnormal situations. Nevertheless,

the integrity and effectiveness of alarm

systems can either provide assistance or

be a hindrance to the process operators

in responding to these situations. Through

the efforts of the Abnormal Situation

Management Consortium, EEMUA, and

other professional groups, a large amount

of best practice information exists to aid

the control system engineer in designing

effective alarm systems. However, due

to various reasons, most existing control

systems must be redesigned/re-engineered

in order to take advantage of these newer

system capabilities and best practices. The

re-design/re-engineering of alarm systems

in these control systems is a responsible

first step in responding to the increasing

frequency of industrial incidents and to begin

to address the billions of dollars that these

incidents cost manufacturers annually. By any

comparison, the re-design/re-engineering

efforts are well worth the investment. This

white paper presents a new alarm philosophy

and approach to achieve these objectives.

Alarm problems in Distributed Control Systems

Indeed, all DCSs have a sophisticated alarm

and HMI system for operators to monitor

and control plant status. These are powerful

platforms for users to design and configure

effective alarm systems. The DCS alarm

system can be a vital, productive tool for

managing industrial process control plants,

and can be configured to identify and notify

personnel of a wide variety of abnormal

conditions in a manufacturing process.

Alarm systems should alert the operator

to a possible problem, provide warning

early enough to allow remediation, guide

the operator to the problem, its cause

and corrective action, and confirm or deny

the effectiveness of the operators’ efforts.

However, a large number of existing alarm

systems do not perform well.

First, before the plant is operating, it is

difficult to make a good or optimal design

and configuration of the alarm system. For

example, too many alarms are configured;

unreasonable alarm limits or dead bands are

set; improper alarm orders are arranged; too

many unimportant alarms during start-up/

shutdown are triggered, etc. This is because

the plant status is not well known or there is

a shortage of more powerful alarm functions.

Second, the plant characteristics may

change with time, possibly resulting in an

improper configuration. Third, demands on

operators are increasing through:

• The need for process operation close to

maximum efficiency

• Higher costs of process interruptions

• More complex processes

• Lower safety margins (which give less

opportunity to recover from upsets)

• Environmental regulations (which may

prohibit venting to atmosphere, direct

discharge to waterways or landfills)

• Fewer operators

• Higher staff turnover (resulting in less

experienced operators)

For example, increasing sophistication of

control systems and processes means that

systems are being operated in multiple

modes by complex computer control, with

the mental model held by the operator

and this model changes significantly over

time. If human factors are not considered

during design, then these starkly different

operator roles ensure a continuation of

overload situations and further incidents. It

is becoming increasingly difficult for any one

operator to understand both the complete

process and the actions of the computer

control system. In fact, the potential for

problems is increasing in modern plants.

Finally, industrial plants are constantly

seeking to improve operations to achieve

better economic results. As a result, the

alarm system in particular is a significant

obstacle to further improvement.

Nevertheless, the importance and necessity

of improvement is often questioned by

asking “Is our existing Alarm System

sufficient?” The answer is usually, “No,”

based on the following questions:

• Are all alarms necessary, requiring

operator action?

• How many alarms occur during normal

operation?

• How many occur during a plant upset?

• How many standing alarms are there?

• Is there ever an overwhelming event

accompanied by alarm ‘floods’?

• Are there nuisance alarms, are large

numbers of alarms acknowledged in quick

succession or are audible alarms regularly

turned off?

In the last 11 minutes before the explosion the two operators had to recognise, acknowledge and act on 275 alarms!


• Is alarm prioritisation reasonable?

• Do operators know what to do with each

alarm?

• Have there been any critical incidents

or near misses where operators missed

alarms or made the wrong response?

• Is there a written policy/strategy on

alarms?

Plants may make significant investments to

improve their overall operations by 2-3%

for the year only to lose two years’ profits

to one unscheduled shutdown. In fact, a

typical plant loses more than 5% of its total

capacity every year due to slow downs

and an approximately equal amount due

to off-spec product, quality giveaway and

other lost opportunities, not to mention any

unscheduled unit outages the plant may

incur. These costs are often underestimated.

Individual plants typically compute

lost opportunities only as a function of

production targets and margins. For

example, if a typical plant were to recover

the 5% productivity loss cited above, the

increase in profit would not be 5% but nearly

50-60%. Given that most fixed and variable

costs have already been covered, nearly all

of the additional revenue would be profit!

Furthermore, accidents like the following

example underline the need to do

something for alarm systems:

The 1994 explosion and fires at the Texaco

Milford Haven refinery injured twenty-six

people and caused damage of around

R662million as well as significant production

loss. Key factors that emerged from the

Health and Safety Executive’s (HSEs)

investigation were:

• There were too many alarms and they

were poorly prioritised

• The control room displays did not help

the operators to understand what was

happening

• There had been inadequate training for

dealing with a stressful and sustained

plant upset

In the last 11 minutes before the explosion the two operators had to recognise, acknowledge and act on 275 alarms!

Alarm management

Alarm Management is imperative to

assessing, improving and optimising plant

alarms, thereby increasing the effectiveness

of plant operators by only notifying them of

a need for their intervention.

What is an Alarm Management System?

Most plant personnel equate alarm

management with reducing alarms; however,

this is only one piece of the puzzle. The

whole puzzle involves providing operators

with enough information to prevent

abnormal situations and to prevent the

escalation of those abnormal situations that

cannot be prevented.

A poor alarm system results in billions

of dollars lost every year to accidents,

equipment damage, unplanned plant or unit

outages, off-spec production, regulatory

fines and huge intangible costs related

to environmental and safety infractions.

Alarm Management is about safety, the

environment, optimising operations and

increasing corporate profits.

One important philosophy is that the

operator must have some action for

any specific alarm. If the action is not

required, the alarm should be removed.

Further, reducing or eliminating alarm

floods liberates an operator to respond to

plant demands, enabling them to avoid

shutdowns and keep the plant running

at optimal performance. In addition, the

advanced alarming -- like alarm shelving

-- can dramatically reduce alarms temporarily

during a specific period so the operators

can focus on important alarms and reduce

start-up/shutdown time.

The relationship between a DCS alarm

system and an Alarm Management System is

shown in Figure 1.

The alarm system of the DCS is the executer

of all alarm functions. However, the Alarm

Management System is the monitor and

optimiser for the DCS alarm system, which is

used to reduce nuisance alarms, rationalise

related alarms, avoid alarm floods and so on.

In addition, some advanced alarm functions

like alarm shelving and alarm suppression

Figure 1: DCS alarm system and Alarm Management System

Why is alarm management required in modern plants?


can be added to the existing DCS alarm

system to make it more effective.

As a result, it is possible to reduce

unscheduled plant shutdowns, improve

performance and mitigate the risk of

incidents and excursions and hence to

enhance reliability and profitability by

improving the performance of the existing

alarm system.

How does an alarm management system work?

The DCS alarm system can be optimised

and enhanced by an Alarm Management

System. An Alarm Management System

and service attempt to identify unnecessary

alarms, improper alarm set values and where

improvements can be made to the current

procedures for dealing with alarms, which

can be shown in figure 2.

As shown, the Alarm Management System

and service is not a one-time project; it is

a redesign/re-engineering and a life-long

process. Therefore the performance of the

alarm system is continuously being improved

and optimised. The key functions and

services are summarised as follows:

Alarm philosophy development

The modern alarm philosophy is introduced

to plant operations. The alarm philosophy

is the collection of guiding principles and

targets by which users configure alarms

and measure alarm performance. Most

philosophies cover the following criteria at a

minimum:

• What is an alarm?

• How are priorities set based on criticality

and time to respond?

• General alarm considerations, e.g., how to

deal with BAD I/O alarms?

• Alarm performance criteria and resolution

activities?

Most plants do not have a robust Alarm

Philosophy. All alarms are defined on an

ad hoc basis. This is the root cause of

most alarm problems. An effective Alarm

Philosophy outlines key concepts and

governing rules for alarm strategy, e.g.,

what constitutes an alarm and what risk

categories pertain to your site operations.

It outlines roles and responsibilities, change

management procedures and project goals,

such as target alarm rates.

Alarm analysis

The alarm analysis module identifies

potential areas for alarm system

performance improvement. This module

automatically collects configuration data,

alarm messages and the operator action

journal from the DCS. The data can be

automatically captured and imported

without any manual intervention. Main

Analysis includes:

• Alarm system performance (alarms per

time period, frequent alarms, chattering

alarms, priority distribution, alarm

summary, etc.)

• Alarm system settings (alarms set by

priority, disabled/inhibited alarms, etc.)

• Process changes (alarm enable states,

alarm priorities, etc.)

The results of the analysis reports can be

used to improve and monitor alarm system

performance.

Performance metrics manager

This module enables business personnel

at all levels to make informed and timely

decisions by providing timely and accurate

access to Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

The performance metrics manager provides

comparable metrics through benchmarking

and normalisation for alarms and operator

interactions independent of control systems

and database formats.

Report manager

This module is a report mechanism. Report

sections may be created from specific

components and then included in a report

that may be scheduled for automatic

execution and publishing. In addition, each

report execution may trigger an e-mail

notification that can be customised to any

number of e-mail recipients.

Real-Time alarm viewer

This module provides real-time viewing of

alarm messages from the alarm system on

Figure 2: Alarm Management System


any authorised client PC connected to the

Alarm Management Server. For Foxboro I/A

Series systems, the alarms are collected from

one or more printer ports on a Foxboro I/A

workstation. A serial to Ethernet converter is

used to send the alarm messages on a LAN

to the Alarm Management Server. This is

the same LAN used for transferring data for

statistical analysis.

The alarm messages can be sorted and

filtered in any column to facilitate analysis

and make the elimination of alarm printers

possible.

Advanced alarm management

This module provides more enhanced

alarm functions for the DCS alarm system to

reduce alarm floods:

• Alarm shelving

• Grouped alarms

• Alarm priority reduction

• Alarm load shedding

• Pattern recognition

• Alarm suppression (redundant voted

alarms, eclipsing alarms, etc.)

Alarm suppression provides significant

benefits in removing standing alarms

when a plant unit is shut down, provided

that the meaning of ‘shut down’ is clearly

understood. If inventory has been removed

as part of the shutdown process and the

equipment is fully isolated, then suppression

of all the alarms is likely to be appropriate.

However, if the plant may restart on short

notice, with key inventories in place, then

there will be a number of alarms that should

not be suppressed during a plant shut

down. In addition, in batch industries like

pharmaceutical plants, alarm set points or

whether an alarm is configured typically

change depending on the batch phase.

If it is not part of the automation, it may

generate alarm floods. Similarly, alarm

conditions may change during different

recipes, which may also result in alarm

floods. State-based alarm techniques are

used in these situations to suppress those

alarm floods.

Case study: Salt River Project

Salt River Project (SRP) is the 3rd largest

US public power utility with 6,500 MW

generated and supplied to 900,000

customers with annual revenue of R21.3

billion. It was named “Utility of the Year”

in 2004 by Electric, Light & Power. Invensys

performed Alarm Management at two SRP

power generation plants:

• Santan – 9 gas fired combined cycle units

with 1,100 MW

• Navajo – 1 of 3 coal-fired once through

supercritical units with 800 MW each

The existing situation is characterised by the

following comment: “We were getting alarm

horns all the time; at start-up, shutdown and

day to day operation. In one 18-hour period,

operators were confronted with 5000 alarms,

every one of which required intervention of

some sort and 98 percent were designated

top priority. The plant had to designate an

operator just for alarm management,” said

Ron Bewsey, SRP I&E Supervisor and I/A

Administrator.

Therefore, in the first phase, the main tasks

are to increase operator available time to

improve plant performance and reduce

the alarm rate and the chance of missing

important alarms. The project scope is:

• Initial alarm system performance

assessment

• Alarm philosophy workshop

• Alarm philosophy and design functional

spec

• Alarm rationalisation

• Alarm rationalisation implementation

• Advanced alarming – future

• Alarm rationalisation service team

The achievements in Santan are:

• Start-up time and effort is reduced from 2

operators up to 4 hours to 1 operator less

than 2 hours

• 40% of configured alarms and resulting

nuisance alarms were picked out and

deleted.

The achievements in Navajo are:

• Initial priority distribution (Priority 1: 98%,

Priorities 2 through 4: 2%) is updated to a

final priority distribution (Priority 1: 11%,

Priority 2: 14%, Priority 3: 75%, Priority 4:

Information Only, Priority 5: Non-critical

bad I/O)

• 44% of the configured alarms and

resulting nuisance alarms were picked out

and deleted

Conclusion

Unreasonably and improperly configured

alarm systems make contributions to

accidents at a non-trivial rate. Although

alarm systems are intended to minimise

incidents, too often they amplify the

consequences of these incidents. Nuisance

alarms, alarm floods and improperly

prioritised alarms all contribute to operator

confusion, and thus increase accident

frequency. DCS Alarm systems can be

improved and optimised through the

Alarm Management System and service.

This re-design/re-engineering procedure

restores the alarm system to a healthy and

helpful state by eliminating nuisance alarms,

reducing alarm floods and ensuring that the

necessary alarms are properly prioritised and

documented.

Why is alarm management required in modern plants?


Dr. Kobus van der Merwe of Industrial Management Enhancement

MES and the human factorWe’ve seen how, with the assistance of

ArchestrA Workfl ow, it’s people that make

things happen rather than technology.

Well, without your staff’s assistance and

collaboration, your sweeping MES initiatives

may just not deliver what you expected

unless the humans in the loop are involved.

Dr Kobus van der Merwe explains how

cognitive decision-making can help.

Background

This article focuses specifi cally on decision-

making related to the production process

(i.e. where certain feed material is converted

into an intermediate or fi nal product).

All functions within the organisation are

effectively put in place in supporting

it. Examples of such processes are

metallurgical benefi ciation processes (pyro-

and hydro-metallurgical), power generation,

or sugar milling and refi ning to name a few.

MES is presented as a solution containing

an ‘accumulation of methods and tools used

to accomplish production’ of the mentioned

product(s). This provides a platform

facilitating effective utilisation of assets and

resources, inventory control and analysis

by improving decision-making. The latter

is achieved by presenting contextualised

information on a near real-time basis.

MES therefore recognises the potential

contribution of decision making towards

plant performance.

As decision making is a function of the

human’s cognitive process, it generates

special challenges. It is generally accepted

that people with more experience

generate higher quality decisions more

often. Differences in levels of education,

culture, process complexity, exposure to

hands-on training and couching, production

pressures and staff turnover all impact on the

experiential knowledge gained by decision

makers in the production environment.

Consequential symptoms observed in

production processes include:

• Non-repeatable production rate and

product quality

• Variance in energy effi ciency

• Certain shift performing better than

others

• Premature equipment failure

• Inability to meet production targets.

These symptoms are stimulating questions

regarding the effectiveness of technology

solutions deployed within manufacturing

plants as one would like to expect consistent

high performance in the presence of

technology. This article aims to highlight

some of the ‘not-so-obvious’ aspects to

consider when attempting to maximise

the returns on technology and asset

investments.

Performance measurement

MES is structured to provide contextualised

information regarding various aspects of the

manufacturing process. Using the ISA-95

structure as reference, Level 3 measurements

are those that report the level of compliance

with predefi ned business processes and

procedures – for example, feed/recipe

composition, production throughput in

various parts of the plant, product quality,

production cost per unit, maintenance

downtime, maintenance cost, energy

Figure 1: Controlling compliance with business processes and operating procedures


About Industrial Management Enhancement

Experience has shown that most production

plants operate in an unstable or high risk state

for 60% or more of the time.

Operational risk encompasses the potential loss

due to the breakdown of controls. Breakdown

of control results in unpredictable and unstable

production processes. By implication, this

condition results in an inability to meet

production targets.

IME delivers Operational Performance

Management solutions to the process and

manufacturing industry. A structured and proven

methodology is utilised to construct process

status maps and to analyse and troubleshoot

the process to quantify Operational Risks.

Projects are characterised by high returns, a

strong emphasis on training and development,

and solutions facilitating asset sweating.

consumption per ton, inventory levels, etc.

Since process performance variability

persists in the presence of MES, it is

necessary to gain insight into root causes

of variance. The consequences of decision

making at the process level is quantified by

Level 0, 1 and 2 measurements (using the

ISA-95 structure as reference).

The approach followed by the Performance

Variance Management methodology is to

gain insight into the root causes of process

variance and link them to data/information

requirements that enable decision makers

to counter inefficiencies. In other words,

the outcome of a project defines what

information is required and how the

information should be applied; it identifies

the gaps that exist within the existing

performance management system and

process. It is in this context that Performance

Variance Management has been adding

value to MES installations and delivering

improved process performance.

The next section focuses on the decision

making process’ characteristics and

provides illustration of the application within

manufacturing. Figure 2 illustrates how

technical enhancements provide step-wise

increases in efficiency whereas quality of

decision making contributes progressively

over time. This graphic illustrates how

knowledge and deep understanding of the

underlying production process, systems,

processes and assets contribute towards

higher levels of efficiency. To achieve the

latter, one has to leverage the capability and

develop operational personnel.

Decision-making

Decision-making plays a central role in

plant performance even in the presence of

automation. Quality of decision making is a

function of the knowledge and experience

of decision makers. The cognitive process

supporting the decision-making process

is influenced by a number of factors – in

general, however, people’s choices are made

to maximise some kind of expectation [1].

This implies that most people try and make

good or optimal decisions. For example,

all people intend driving safely to their

destination. We can expect that more

experienced vehicle drivers will do so more

often by making higher quality decisions

compared to an inexperienced young

person (that’s why a person under 25 years

of age pays a higher short-term vehicle

insurance premium!). The same reasoning

can be applied to technical and operational

personnel within manufacturing.

In order to make some evaluation, the

decision maker has to formulate a mental

picture of the problem. Once this reference

point is established it is possible to

determine impact and probability of a

specific action. Decision makers will also

evaluate the quality of their choice in terms

of the gain or loss against the reference

point.

Experience is gained through repeated

pattern observations and subsequent

interpretation. For example, by experience

we know that certain parts of the roads we

travel are more prone to accidents. This

experience was gained by observing how

other drivers behave and by the frequency

of accidents. In order to make reliable

decisions while travelling this stretch of road,

we adapt our reference point continuously.

This adaptation is necessary since our

position relative to other vehicles and

conditions changes. Decisions we make

while driving are therefore governed by the

consequential impact. Circumstances are

also interpreted by the cognitive process to

provide feedback regarding the probability

of success.

It is also worth considering the impact (value)

and probability of choice for a moment.

Impact or value of choice can only be

evaluated if it is quantifiable. The absence

of experience and knowledge relating to

the environment within which such decisions

are made, will have a negative impact

on the quality of choice. This applies to

the probability of realising the expected

outcome as well.

This explains why people tend to revert

to what they perceive as ‘tried and tested’

methods of operation. It is common to find

that plants are operated in a specific manner

by specific operators. Operators will walk

onto the plant at the start of shift and alter

certain set points irrespective of the current

state of the plant. This behaviour is a result

of their mental models (or opinions) built up

through experience.

MES and the human factor


It is commonly accepted that experience

and knowledge is built up over time. As

mentioned earlier, experience is gained

through observation and interpretation.

Due to the limited capacity of the human’s

cognitive process, it will apply a filter if

presented with large quantities of data. The

latter is more prevalent under situations

exposing higher levels of complexity. This

filtering results in bias since the same

filtering tends to be applied every time

similar situations occur.

The production plant is considered a

complex environment where it’s been

observed that changing set points to effect

certain changes (which didn’t materialise)

is common practice. Latter observations

imply that the decision maker wasn’t able

to distinguish between different process

conditions and subsequently applied a

decision which only seemed to be correct

based on biased interpretation. The

presence of biased interpretation is also

confirmed by the fact that the choice of

action by different decision makers will differ.

Bias and differences in mental models are

well illustrated when attempting to find

explanation for process inefficiency during a

morning meeting! There are many opinions

and unfortunately the opinion of the person

with the loudest voice is more than often

incorrectly accepted as fact.

Human behaviour within the manufacturing

plant is governed by the criteria against

which their performance is measured

(this actually applies to all areas of life!).

The need therefore exists to identify

current gaps within the performance

management process that leads to

suboptimal performance – in many cases it

is the result of using incorrect performance

measurements. Furthermore, it is necessary

to provide a platform for decision makers

to generate quality decisions. Within

the process environment, it is therefore

necessary to:

• Deliver unbiased insight into the

production process states –

� Quantify and describe the respective

process states

� Determine for how long the process

remains in respective process states.

This quantifies the chances of realising

the expected financial performance.

For example, if the plant is operating

for only 30% of the time within the

targeted range the chances of realising

the anticipated financial performance

is low.

• Visualise inter-relationships in a

practical and easy-to-use format. This

representation quantifies the current

circumstances (process state) and

therefore provides a mental picture of the

current state.

• Provide a practical method to manage

process conditions – this implies providing

guidance to steer the process towards

optimal performance and / or maintaining

the current state.

• Encapsulate process states associated

with ‘good’ and ‘bad’ performance.

This serves as documented ‘evidence’

of performance state and assists the

inexperienced decision maker to

recognise performance states. By

implication it delivers information that

reduces the time that decision makers

need to gain relevant experience.

• Facilitate change management and

people development. A well-structured

process needs to be followed to align

everyone to unbiased information

describing process states and methods

to manage the plant towards repetitive

performance.

Figure 2 - Quality of decision-making


Summary

The above requirements are addressed

through the Process Variance Management

methodology. Results facilitate effective

interpretation of existing measurements

and / or result in the development of new

measurements utilised for performance

management. It leverages the functionality

offered by MES to improve decision making.

Technology can add exceptional value to

a manufacturing process and MES is no

exception. A prerequisite is to design the

content to facilitate appropriate behaviour.

Behaviour alignment is achieved by common

understanding of process states and

conditions, interpretation, and subsequent

decision making.

This article provided some background on

the cognitive process and its characteristics

in the context of decision-making. Future

articles will address aspects relating to

change management, reviewing existing

business processes and operating

procedures, training and development,

continual improvement and how people

can be encouraged to improve financial

performance while leveraging existing

technology and infrastructure.

Reference

Newell, B.R., D.A. Lagnado, and S.D. R.,

Straight Choices - The psychology of

decision making. 2007: Psychology Press.

For more information contact:

Dr. Kobus van der Merwe

Industrial Management Enhancement

Mobile: +27 (0)82 656 5601

Mailto: [email protected]

MES and the human factor


Human differentiator dictionaryBest Practice – This refers to a technique,

method, process, activity, incentive or reward

which conventional wisdom regards as more

effective at delivering a particular outcome

than any other technique, method, process,

etc. when applied to a particular condition

or circumstance. The idea is that with proper

processes, checks and testing, a desired

outcome can be delivered with fewer

problems and unforeseen complications.

Best practices can also be defined as the

most efficient (least amount of effort) and

effective (best results) way of accomplishing

a task, based on repeatable procedures that

have proven themselves over time for large

numbers of people.

A given best practice is only applicable to

particular condition or circumstance and

may have to be modified or adapted for

similar circumstances. In addition, a “best”

practice can evolve to become better as

improvements are discovered.

Biometrics - Biometrics (or biometric

authentication) refers to the identification

of humans by their characteristics or traits.

Biometrics is used in computer science as a

form of identification and access control. It

is also used to identify individuals in groups

that are under surveillance.

BizTalk - Microsoft BizTalk Server, often

referred to as simply “BizTalk”, is an

Enterprise Service Bus. Through the

use of “adapters” which are tailored to

communicate with different software

systems used in a large enterprise, it

enables companies to automate business

processes.

In a common scenario, BizTalk enables

companies to integrate and manage

automated business processes by

exchanging business documents such as

purchase orders and invoices between

disparate applications, within or across

organisational boundaries. Human-centric

processes cannot be implemented directly

with BizTalk Server and need additional

solutions like Microsoft SharePoint server.

Business Process Management (BPM)

– This refers to a holistic management

approach focused on aligning all aspects

of an organisation with the wants and

needs of clients. It promotes business

effectiveness and efficiency while striving

for innovation, flexibility and integration

with technology. BPM attempts to improve

processes continuously. It can therefore

be described as a “process optimisation

process.” It is argued that BPM enables

organisations to be more efficient, more

effective and more capable of change than a

functionally focused, traditional hierarchical

management approach. An empirical study

by Kohlbacher (2009) indicates that BPM

helps organisations to gain higher customer

satisfaction, product quality, delivery speed

and to reduce time-to-market.

Decision-making – The ability to choose

one course of action rather than any other

based on available information, knowledge,

experience and situation awareness.

Difference between workflow and process –

A workflow is a series of connected activities

that are intended to achieve a certain

result. This is however, a free-wheeling

arrangement that often lacks the required

checks and balances. A process, on the

other hand, defines, monitors and controls

a workflow to ensure that it achieves its

objective(s) by conforming to its prescribed

operational and performance requirements.

Empowerment – Providing someone

with the necessary tools (e.g. training,

information services, etc.), authority and trust

to make decisions. This “puts out the fire”

at its source leaving higher level process

owners free to improve the processes in

their charge.

EYESIM – High-level simulation software

from SimSci-Esscor for the training of plant

personnel. EYESIM provides complete

plant crew training to improve skills that

are safety-critical by enabling operators to

perform tasks in a simulated environment,

allowing them to react quickly and

correctly, facilitating reactions in high stress

conditions, and instilling standards for team

training and communications.

IntelaTrac – Wonderware’s IntelaTrac

software manages the processes

and procedures used to ensure that

organisations consistently execute all field

tasks required to achieve reliable operations.

Through the use of mobile computers, the

workforce can provide feedback on the

non-instrumented portions of the plant and

receive maintenance information or other

guidance in return.

Process –

(1) A process typically describes the act of

taking something through an established

and usually routine set of procedures to

convert it from one form to another such

as in manufacturing where aluminium is

turned into aircraft or processing paperwork

to grant a mortgage loan, or converting

computer data into usable information.

A process involves steps and decisions in

the way work is accomplished. A process

monitors and controls workflows to

make sure that each step in the workflow

(sub-process) conforms to set performance

criteria. Depending on conditions, process

objectives may change, leading to a

change in their operational requirements

and performance criteria. This will result

in a new or modified process to meet the

new objectives. Because of the “feedback,

learn, redesign” loop, processes tend to be

largely self-correcting (e.g. the process of

evolution).


(2) A process is a series of controlled and

measurable actions that involves feedback,

learning mechanisms and contingency plans

to transform energy and / or matter from

one form into another (e.g. a manufacturing

process transforms raw materials into

finished goods. A sales process transforms

prospects into customers.)

SharePoint - Microsoft SharePoint is a

family of software products developed by

Microsoft for collaboration, file sharing and

Web publishing. This family of products

includes: Microsoft SharePoint Server,

Microsoft SharePoint Foundation, Microsoft

Search Server, Microsoft SharePoint

Designer and Microsoft SharePoint

Workspace.

Microsoft SharePoint is a Web technology

based server that can be used to build

portals, collaboration sites and also content

management sites. It is very versatile in a

number of features and supports various

enterprise and Web scenarios. It is also

popular for document management

solutions. SharePoint can also be used as a

building platform to build systems atop its

framework.

Situational awareness - Situational

awareness is the perception of environmental

elements with respect to time and/or space,

the comprehension of their meaning, and

the projection of their status after some

variable has changed, such as time, or some

other variable, such as a predetermined

event. It is also a field of study concerned

with perception of the environment critical

to decision-makers in complex, dynamic

areas from aviation, air traffic control, power

plant operations, military command and

control, and emergency services such as fire

fighting and policing; to more ordinary but

nevertheless complex tasks such as driving an

automobile or bicycle.

Situational awareness (SA) involves being

aware of what is happening in the vicinity,

in order to understand how information,

events, and one’s own actions will impact

goals and objectives, both immediately and

in the near future. One with an adept sense

of situational awareness generally has a

high degree of knowledge with respect to

inputs and outputs of a system, i.e. an innate

“feel” for situations, people, and events that

play out due to variables the subject can

control. Lacking or inadequate situational

awareness has been identified as one of

the primary factors in accidents attributed

to human error. Thus, situational awareness

is especially important in work domains

where the information flow can be quite

high and poor decisions may lead to serious

consequences (e.g., piloting an airplane,

functioning as a soldier, or treating critically

ill or injured patients).

Having complete, accurate and up-to-the-

minute SA is essential where technological

and situational complexity on the human

decision-maker are a concern. Situation

awareness has been recognised as a critical,

yet often elusive, foundation for successful

decision-making across a broad range of

complex and dynamic systems, including

aviation and air traffic control, emergency

response and military command and control

operations and offshore oil and nuclear

power plant management.

Situational awareness is often studied in the

context of leadership and roles involving

time-critical applications, however it is

often referenced in other fields as well.

For example, in the study of influence,

situational awareness is found to be a critical

component. This is further extended into

the animal kingdom, where very often the

alpha pair demonstrates superior situation

awareness with respect to the well being of

those within the animal pack.

Workflow - A workflow consists of a

sequence of connected steps. It is a

depiction of a sequence of operations,

declared as work of a person, a group of

persons, an organisation of staff, or one

or more simple or complex mechanisms.

Workflow may be seen as any abstraction

of real work. For control purposes, workflow

may be a view on real work under a

chosen aspect, thus serving as a virtual

representation of actual work. The flow

being described often refers to a document

that is being transferred from one step to

another.

A workflow is a model to represent real

work for further assessment (e.g., for

describing a reliably repeatable sequence of

operations). More abstractly, a workflow is a

pattern of activity enabled by a systematic

organisation of resources, defined roles and

mass, energy and information flows, into a

work process that can be documented and

learned. Workflows are designed to achieve

processing intents of some sort, such as

physical transformation, service provision, or

information processing.

Acknowledgement: Some of the above

material is sourced from Wikipedia

Human differentiator dictionary


Events: X-CHANGE 2013

The human differentiator: Driving measureable, real-time performance improvements by improving the value of the contribution your people make to your business

X-CHANGE 2013 will focus on how

Invensys can help empower your

operational and business personnel

to excel through the use of innovative

technology. While there’s no lack of

technology, it’s humans, at the end of

the day, that are the differentiators

between its success or failure. We know.

We’ve been involved with enriching the

contributions of people for over a century.

That’s a lot of experience.

The road to success depends on a definitive

automation and information strategy as well

as some notable landmarks. These include

the Invensys Enterprise Control System

and its many integrated applications, the

safeguard of past investments, integration

with existing corporate assets, providing

continuously current technology, supplying

outstanding customer support and an

enviable track record of delivering optimised

industrial information and operational

solutions to most of the world’s leading

companies.

X-CHANGE is your definitive window to

the industrial automation and information

landscape and brings together more

industry professionals than any other event

of its kind in Southern Africa. System

integrators, hardware and software suppliers,

end-users and international industrial

automation authorities come together to

X-CHANGE ideas, network and collaborate

at what is widely regarded as South Africa’s

premier industrial event.

Celebrating the conference’s 21st anniversary, X-CHANGE 2013 will be held from 21st to 24th April at Sun City and promises to once again add great value to the lives of industrial automation professionals country-wide.

So, we invite everyone who has something

to share or something they want to learn

to X-CHANGE 2013. If you’ve never been

to X-CHANGE before, you’re in for a most

pleasant and informative surprise. If you’re a

regular, on the other hand, we don’t have to

sell you on the idea and welcome you back.

X-CHANGE 2013 presentation streams

The presentation streams have been designed

to highlight and address the information needs

of executives, system engineers, production

managers, plant managers and engineers

involved in the mining and manufacturing

industries. That’s because they all need

different information in the right context and at

the right time – all the time.

The contents of the presentations range

from technical to more business-oriented

and you will be able to choose those

best suited to your current operational or

business needs.

Technology stream

Every year, Invensys Operations

Management introduces new and significant

products to its wide range of solutions.

This is your opportunity to see what these

products will do for your bottom line as

the presentations highlight the features,

advantages and benefits of each solution as

applicable to your industry. This year, there

are significant functionality upgrades and

enhancements to your favourite applications

as well as some new ones that continue to

populate the Invensys InFusion enterprise

control system space (e.g. Intelligent

Marshalling, plug-in DCS migration,

virtualisation, MES Quality Management

System, handling multiple ArchestrA

galaxies, Overview Client and many more).

Solutions stream

The solutions stream takes a broader look

at ways of addressing your enterprise

manufacturing intelligence needs, improving

asset effectiveness, streamlining your

manufacturing execution system for operational

performance excellence, getting you started on

the road to enterprise integration, empowering

your workforce, corporate energy management,

safety and reliability, business optimisation

and other topics on which the health of your

enterprise depends.


Events: X-CHANGE 2013

Invensys Operations Management stream

From valves to virtualisation and from

sensors to simulation, Invensys Operations

Management does it all. Invensys

Wonderware is only one of nine Invensys

Operations Management business units, so

it’s no wonder that the range of solutions

available to you has grown phenomenally

and very rapidly since the company started

operations in South Africa in 2011.

This stream will demonstrate how hardware

and software solution from Avantis,

Eurotherm, Foxboro, InFusion, SimSci-

Esscor Skelta and Triconex all contribute to

providing a seamless information continuum

from sensor to boardroom.

User presentations stream

End-users and system integrators present

the successful implementation of projects

using Invensys solutions. From SCADA to

MES and Manufacturing Intelligence to

enterprise integration, come and see how

the concept of Invensys’ Enterprise Control

System is helping mining and manufacturing

companies map some of the world’s leading

solutions to their needs in a practical way.

All user presentations are entered into the

Invensys Operations Management Open

competition

Keynote speakers

We are fortunate in having access to some

of the leading local and international

authorities on subjects as far ranging as how

to survive profitably in the current world

economic climate to the adoption of new

approaches to information and control in

mining and manufacturing. Once they leave

their pedestals, you can have casual chats

with them or book sessions where you have

the chance of discussing your production

and business issues one-on- one.

Their wide and varied industry experience

will save you from reinventing the wheel and

cut through complexity to give you fresh,

practical insights that you can apply when

you get back to the office.

Invensys Operations Management Open

We have found that one of the most valuable

ways to assess a product and its suitability is to

speak to the people who use it. The Invensys

Operations Management Open was introduced

to encourage both end users and system

integrators to document their experiences of

successful implementations using Invensys

Wonderware solutions. These are customers

who have used the products extensively and

their first hand experiences offer insights not

available from any other source.

All user presentations are entered into

the Invensys Operations Management

Open competition where prizes are

awarded for the best presentations in

various categories such as best SCADA/

HMI, MES, EMI or Enterprise Integration

implementation. The presentations are then

documented in the form of articles and,

after approval, sent to various magazines

for publication. These articles also appear

on the Invensys Wonderware web site and

bi-monthly Protocol magazine as well as

Invensys Operations Management’s annual

international booklet of success stories.


Delegates whose presentations are

accepted for X-CHANGE automatically

qualify to attend the conference free of

charge!

(If you are interested in submitting a

presentation, please see the booking

information below.)

Expo

System integrators as well as hardware and

software partners use this unique venue to

showcase their wares and achievements. They

do so because nowhere else is there such

an opportunity to talk to a more qualifi ed

audience eager to see what they have to offer.

(Should you wish to exhibit your solutions,

please see the booking information below.)

Hands-on training

At X-CHANGE 2013 you can look forward

to practical hands-on training sessions

where you get to test-drive the products for

yourself. These practical sessions will allow

you to evaluate how and where they may

best be applied in your environment.

Spouse programme

Such conferences are always better

when shared with your partner – who

may, however, not share your enthusiasm

regarding the benefi ts of advanced

technology. That’s why a rich programme of

entertainment has been planned for your

partner ranging from sporting activities to

sightseeing and game-spotting (depending

on the venue) among many other events.

On-line bookings

Visit www.x-change.co.za if you want to do

any of the following:

• Book your attendance at X-CHANGE

2013

• Book a stand at the Expo

• Enter the Invensys Operations

Management Open and have a chance of

attending the conference free of charge

by doing a presentation and providing

prescribed material for us to write a

success story of the implementation

of Invensys solutions in an interesting

application

Ask anyone who has ever attended

X-CHANGE in the last 20 years – you

won’t be disappointed – and neither were

they!


Services

and Support


Invensys Sentinel ServicesIn a Nutshell ...

Invensys offers advanced remote services

technology that enhances our ability to

deliver higher availability and reliability of

plant assets to your company.

Key benefi ts

• Increased uptime

• Frees you to focus on looking after

production rather than control systems

Key features

• 24/7/365 remote monitoring and

notifi cation of issues

• Detect and rectify issues or problems

before they become mission-affecting

• Provide better management of system

resources to improve asset performance

• Streamline diagnosis process

• Fast and systematic event resolution

eliminates trial and error and cuts costs

• Clear and regular reports provide insight

into possible improvements

Who’s supervising the supervisors?

You trust your Invensys Wonderware

Industrial IT solutions to supervise your

wealth-creating processes but who’s

supervising them? Let Invensys Sentinel

Services (ISS) be your SCADA’s SCADA

by remotely and constantly monitoring

and reporting 24/7 on the KPIs of your

Wonderware-based systems so that

potential problems can be nipped in the

bud. This will give you the peace of mind

you need to focus on improving your

company’s bottom line rather than looking

after systems.

Using technology to provide world-class support

Peak performance in our operating plants is a

continuous process that is being threatened

on a daily basis. As skills scarcity increases,

most production technicians are stretched

to the limit with their daily tasks. Little time is

left to maintain the running software systems

and very few can fi nd the time to develop and

maintain specialist knowledge to diagnose

faults on these systems.

As a result, Invensys offers ISS whose job is

to monitor the performance of your Invensys

Wonderware assets — continuously.

We achieve this by installing special “agent

software” on each Wonderware server

located at your sites. These agents monitor

the system on a 24x7 basis to ensure that

critical resources are performing within best

practice norms.

If an unacceptable threshold is reached, an

alarm is raised and Invensys engineers are

alerted before an issue develops. Remote

connectivity is also designed to ensure

that, if there is a problem, Invensys experts

can work with you to make appropriate

adjustments to correct the issue and return

your system to normal operation quickly and

easily.

The process

Our event management system monitors

anomalies or events that occur in the

Wonderware customer environment and

focuses on detecting issues and generating

meaningful notifi cations. These notifi cations

are reported to the Invensys Command

Centre which offers a single point of contact

for customer incidents and requests.

Reporting

A key aspect of Invensys Sentinel Services is

feedback to you. As a result, we ensure that

we provide monthly system health status

reports which include:

• Overall health status for the month

• Critical, major, medium and minor system

issues and errors for that month

• Changes or corrections made to fi x

errors that occurred in the Wonderware

environment


• Proposals for Wonderware system

modifications to ensure that the system

conforms to best practice standards

Monitored events

Monitoring includes examining the KPIs

of the Wonderware System Platform and

Historian, hardware performance, event logs,

Wonderware machines (where applicable)

among others. There is also a monthly audit

of OS, Windows and Wonderware version

control, Wonderware licence status, IP

configuration and more.

Optional value-added services

• Anti-virus reporting

• Wonderware and Microsoft patch

management

• Operating system platform support

Contact us

For more information please contact:

Zaine Domingo, ISS Product Manager —

Invensys Operations Management

T +27 (0)11 607 8191 | 0800 INVENSYS |

[email protected]

Invensys Sentinel Services


Customer FIRSTIn a nutshell ...

Comprehensive Services

Customer FIRST is not just technical

support, it’s a comprehensive

programme to help you manage your

systems and protect your investments.

Real Value

Customer FIRST members enjoy the

many benefits of a closer collaborative

relationship with Invensys.

• Responsive services

• Depth of expertise

• Proactive planning

• Continuous performance monitoring

• Emergency contingency provisioning

• Deep discounts on hardware

• Software and services

These important elements make the

Customer FIRST membership an

essential part of your business success.

Maximise asset performance

Downtime costs businesses millions of Rand

- Customer FIRST support gives you options

to maximise productivity by keeping your

operations running smoothly.

Outages, both planned and unplanned,

are costly; businesses increasingly need to

employ effective pre-emptive strategies

to reduce risks and employ efficient and

effective resourcing strategies to ensure that

non-productive time is kept to a minimum.

Customer FIRST is not just technical support,

it’s a comprehensive programme to help

you manage your systems and maximise the

performance of your assets.

Downtime hurts - Customer FIRST can help

Even the most reliable equipment requires

downtime, perhaps for routine maintenance,

preventative maintenance, upgrades or

replacement. You need to ensure that

downtime is kept to a minimum and to

ensure that there is minimal production loss

as a result.

• Customer FIRST provides you with

access to great hardware maintenance,

software maintenance and comprehensive

lifecycle management services to help

you optimise your planned downtime and

minimise unplanned downtime events.

Recovery time is critical and any delays

in acquiring either replacement parts, or

the expertise required to quickly resolve

problems, can have a significant financial

impact on your business.

• Customer FIRST provides you with timely

access to critical spare parts with the

ability to manage spares more easily and

ensure the reliability of your systems.

What’s more, extended downtime presents

other risks to your business such as failing

to meet contractual obligations to your

customers and the loss of business that

may ensue.

• Customer FIRST also gives you access

to Invensys technical resources to

help you ensure that your system is

back to capacity in as short a time as

possible. Our world-class global service

organisation is available locally, so the

help you need is never far away.

Asset performance is not just about

maximising availability though; you need

to ensure that your assets are working to

their maximum potential. You also need

to minimise the risk to your business of

missed schedules, poor quality or regulatory

violations, with the business consequences

that may follow.

Customer FIRST gives you proactive remote

health monitoring services to spot warning

signs before problems occur and advanced

consulting services to tune your systems to

maximum performance.

Customer first – our mission: your success

Customer FIRST membership gives you

access to award-winning technical support,

hardware and software maintenance

services, lifecycle management and remote

Services, training and consulting services

and much more. The programme provides

you with comprehensive services and flexible

options to choose exactly the right kind of

programme to suit your business needs and

help you to maximise asset performance.

Contact information

Support Telephone Number:

0861-WONDER (0861-966337) or

0800-INVENSYS (Toll Free)

E-mail: [email protected] or

[email protected]


2013 Training Schedule(Johannesburg)

NOTE:

The dates shown apply to training

at our offi ces in Bedfordview,

Johannesburg. Regional training is

presented on demand. A minimum of

six delegates is required to arrange

a course.

Regional training venues:

Durban: Khaya Lembali,

Morningside.

Cape Town: Durbanville Conference

Centre.

Port Elizabeth: Pickering Park

Conference Centre, Newton Park.

i Did you know that your bottom line is directly proportional to the effectiveness of your workforce?

2013 Training Schedule

As the owner of some of the world’s

most popular, advanced and versatile

industrial automation, information and

MES software solutions, you’ll want to

get the most from your investment and

that includes getting the best training

in the business. We routinely train about

600 professionals like you every year not

only on how to use our solutions but how

to turn our product features into real

business benefits.

InTouch Part 1 Fundamentals (includes New Graphics)

• 27 – 31 May

• 1 – 5 July

• 29 July – 2 August

InTouch Part 2 Advanced (includes New Graphics)

• 3 –6 June

• 8 – 11 July

System Platform – Application Server (includes new graphics)

• 11 – 15 March

• 6 – 10 May

• 24 – 28 June

• 22 – 26 July

Historian (includes Historian Client)

• 13 – 16 May

• 18 – 21 June

• 19 – 22 August

InBatch

• 4 – 8 February

Bundled courses

In addition to the above, we offer the

following bundled courses at reduced rates:

For maintenance and engineering personnel:

• InTouch only (includes InTouch

Fundamentals and InTouch Advanced)

• InTouch and Historian (includes InTouch

Fundamentals, InTouch Advanced and

Historian)

• System Platform – Application Server

(includes InTouch Fundamentals, InTouch

Advanced, Historian, System Platform and

Application Server)

For system integrators:

• System Platform – Application Server

(includes InTouch Fundamentals, InTouch

Advanced, Historian, System Platform and

Application Server)

For non-technical personnel (operators, managers, supervisors):

• Historian (includes ActiveFactory basics

for non-technical staff)

For all your training requirements, contact

Emmi du Preez at

[email protected] or

[email protected] or call

Emmi on 011 607 8286.


Use Protocol Magazine to generate business opportunitiesProtocol magazine continues to be well

received on a bi-monthly basis by 6500

industry professionals like you, at every

level of the country’s leading mining

and manufacturing companies. You can

leverage this highly-qualified readership

to be heard.

How do you promote yourself right now?

Some of the things you might be doing

could include inserting opinion pieces,

adverts, editorials and other material

into South Africa’s leading manufacturing

and mining magazines. A good choice

since these are excellent and professional

publications that land on decision-makers’

desks every month.

What Protocol offers is all the advantages

of a professional magazine with a large

circulation but the cherry on the cake is

that all the readers of Protocol have one

thing in common – Wonderware solutions

in the areas of SCADA, MES, EMI, BPM and

enterprise integration – in fact, anything to

do with industrial and corporate production

IT. Everything in Protocol is aimed at helping

end users get more from their Wonderware

investment and trigger them to look at new

possibilities. Nobody wants to reinvent a

costly development or investigation wheel

and what you have to offer will go a long way

to stopping that happening.

Let’s think for a minute about your perfect

promotion vehicle and what it should do for

you:

• It must convey your message in a

professional manner to a large, targeted

and qualified audience

• It must generate incremental business (if

you’re a solution supplier) or recognition

(if you’re an end-user)

• It must generate market awareness of

your capabilities

• It must do all that at a reasonable cost

Protocol magazine meets all these criteria.

If you’re an end-user, your stakeholders are

most interested to know how well you’re

looking after their interests by lowering costs

and improving efficiency. Your colleagues

in the industry are keen to see how you’ve

implemented Wonderware solutions so that

they can evaluate if these will have the same

benefits in their environments.

If you’re a system integrator, end-users

want to know what you’ve done so that they

can consider you as a solution supplier for

their next project.

If you’re a hardware or software vendor,

end-users and system integrators want to

know about how well your offerings work

in the Wonderware environment and how

they can help them do a better and more

cost-effective job.

What medium will work best for you?

Success stories:

They won’t cost you a cent and you don’t

have to write them. Simply send an e-mail

to your account manager stating that you

have the makings of a good story and why

you think it is so. You will then be sent a

Guideline and a Permission to Publish form

to complete and return.

The Guideline is in the form of prompts to

which you supply the answers to the best of

your ability. This, together with the graphical

information required, will be used to write

the article which will be sent back to you for

editing, approval, etc.

The Permission to Publish form must be

signed by the end-user of the installation

and system integrator / solution vendor

(if applicable) before work on the article is

started. This ensures that all the work that

goes into compiling the story will not be

wasted.

You are free to use the completed success

story in any marketing sense you wish and

you have hundreds of examples on our

web site and in past issues of A2ware and

FutureLinx.

Opinion Pieces:

Once again, there’s no cost involved and

you don’t have to worry about probably

not having majored in English. Decide on a

central theme and the idea(s) you want to

put across, then jot down all the reinforcing

arguments you can think of (as well as

references if applicable). Also include any

supporting graphics you feel will better

illustrate the point.

Send your draft article to your account manager

and, if necessary, we’ll make the necessary edits

before returning it to you for approval.

Comments to the editor, Q&As, Product and/or service information:

Send your submissions to Denis your

account manager and they (as well as the


Use Protocol Magazine to generate business opportunities

i Did you know that if you don’t talk to anyone, they’re not likely to talk to you or send orders?

answers) will be published in the next issue

(if interesting and relevant).

Material formats

Text – In Microsoft Word format

Graphics – In PowerPoint, Bitmap or JPEG

format (the last two in the highest possible

resolution you have)

Advertising:

For all your advertising requirements –

including the drafting of effective adverts

from scratch – contact Heather Simpkins at

The Marketing Suite.

So what are we really saying?

As an end-user or supplier of Invensys

Wonderware and associated solutions, you

form part of the world’s largest ecosystem

of professionals in the fi elds of industrial

automation and the delivery of actionable

intelligence from the shop fl oor to the top

fl oor.

That makes you pretty special.

That makes what you have to say signifi cant

and important.

In other words, what you have to say matters

and we have made it as easy as possible for

you to say it!

You will be talking to people with the same

reality as you and who have the same

problems and concerns.

So, what we’re really saying is, use Protocol

magazine to say what you believe needs

to be said.


On the lighter sideOnly in Africa... Here’s some more brain

itching powder guaranteed to make your eyes water:

• I think I might be getting over my

insomnia. The other day my foot fell

asleep.

• Absence of proof is not proof of absence.

• Reality is nothing but a collective hunch.

• I can win an argument on any topic,

against any opponent. People know this,

and steer clear of me at parties. Often, as

a sign of their great respect, they don’t

even invite me.

• I’m at the age where food has taken the

place of sex in my life. In fact, I’ve just had

a mirror put over my kitchen table.

• The will to be stupid is a very powerful

force, but there are always alternatives.

• Expediting is doing at the office what,

if your wife does it at home, you call

nagging.

• If a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered

mind, what is the significance of an empty

desk?

• When dealing with the insane, the best

method is to pretend to be sane.

• I’ll be more enthusiastic about

encouraging thinking outside the box

when there’s evidence of any thinking

going on inside it.

• A man’s respect for law and order exists in

precise relationship to the size of his pay

check.

• Girl who do back spring on bedspring

have offspring next spring.

• Every 4 seconds a woman has a baby. We

must find this woman and stop her.

• Teamwork is essential; it gives the enemy

someone else to shoot at.

• Wisdom comes with age. Death comes

with age. Therefore, wisdom is dangerous.

• I’ve got about as much self control as two

rabbits on a first date.

• My wife ran off with my best friend last

week. I miss him!

• We are all time travellers moving at the

speed of exactly 60 minutes per hour.

• When in doubt, poke it with a stick.

• Okay, brain. You don’t like me and I don’t

like you, but let’s get through this thing

and then I can continue killing you with

beer.

• The children of Israel wandered around

the desert for 40 years. Even in biblical

times, men wouldn’t ask for directions.

• No man is an island, but some of us have

pretty long peninsulas.

• Give a person a fish and you feed him for

a day, teach a person to use the Internet

and they won’t bother you for weeks.

• So many stupid people and so few

asteroids.

• The roundest knight at King Arthur’s table

was Sir Cumference.

• I know Karate! ...and several other

Japanese words.

• Bulimia: twice the taste, none of the

calories.

• What’s all the fuss about same-sex

marriages ? I’ve been married for years

and I keep having the same sex.

• A true friend stabs you in the front.


On the lighter side

Only in Africa...• Always guard your rear while you’re in the

hospital...You’re in enema territory.

• The family that sticks together should

bathe more often.

• If I was a ghost on “Ghost Whisperer” the

first thing I would ask Jennifer Love Hewitt

is “are those real?”

• Marriage certificate is just another word

for a work permit.

• Keep the dream alive: Hit the snooze

button.

• Liberty without learning is always in peril;

learning without liberty is always in vain.

• If there is anything the nonconformist

hates worse than a conformist, it’s another

nonconformist who doesn’t conform to

the prevailing standard of nonconformity.

• I’m sick of following my dreams. I’m just

going to ask them where they’re going

and hook up with them later.

• The greatest mystery is not that we

have been flung at random between the

profusion of matter and of the stars, but

that within this prison we can draw from

ourselves images powerful enough to

deny our nothingness.

• That is the saving grace of humour, if you

fail no one is laughing at you.

• Disbelief in magic can force a poor

soul into believing in government and

business.

• It takes a big man to cry, but it takes a

bigger man to laugh at that man.

• My grandmother is over eighty and still

doesn’t need glasses. She drinks right out

of the bottle.

• Contrary to general belief, I do not

believe that friends are necessarily the

people you like best, they are merely the

people who got there first.

• Programming today is a race between

software engineers striving to build bigger

and better idiot-proof programmes, and

the universe trying to produce bigger

and better idiots. So far, the universe is

winning.

• What’s another word for Thesaurus?

• What do you have when you have

two little balls in your hand? A man’s

undivided attention.

• I do not have a psychiatrist and I do not

want one, for the simple reason that if he

listened to me long enough, he might

become disturbed.

• As I grow older, I regret to say that a

detestable habit of thinking seems to be

getting hold of me.

• Never knock on Death’s door: ring the bell

and run away! Death really hates that!

• What we call ‘progress’ is the exchange of

one nuisance for another nuisance.

• When I am abroad, I always make it a rule

never to criticise or attack the government

of my own country. The country I’m

visiting usually does a better job than I

ever could.


Protocol Crossword #59

When you’ve completed the crossword, the letters in the coloured

boxes state that which you must be alert to if you are to have situation

awareness.

Note: This magazine contains the answers to a number of the clues.

E-mail your answer to: [email protected]. The sender of the

first correct answer received will get a hamper of Invensys Wonderware

goodies.

Clues across: 1. That which keeps us in control (9,9) (follow the arrow

around the corner)

9. Proper ________ _______________ helps operators

cope and trust the control system (5,10) (follow the

arrow around the corner)

13. Delete (5)

14. Square, flat-bottom boats (5)

16. A single article (4)

17. How well something like operations are doing (11)

20. Sodium symbol (2)

21. Thanks

23. It’s all around us (3)

24. Charged particle (3)

25. The king of HMIs (7)

28. Latest (6)

30. Was consumed (5)

32. We’re all doing it (5)

34. Software available from SimSci-Esscor (6)

38. Tiny (3)

39. Denotes maiden name (3)

40. A thin plate, sheet, or layer (6)

41. Backbone (5)

44. Hovercraft cushions (6)

45. Cut (5)

46. He ______ out a meagre living (4)

47. Verdi opera (4)

48. American girls (4)

50. Iron oxide (4)

52. Reorder Lead Time (3)

54 Roman six (2)

56. Not applicable (2)

57. Nerd (4)

59. Toy (4)

61. Input/Output (2)

62. Hopping amphibians (5)

64. Cape Town registration (2)

66. Human-level process control ArchestrA ___________

(8)

69. This issue of Protocol is about this factor (5)

70. Over and above (5)

71. SA six-wheeled armoured vehicle (5)

73. True North (2)

74. Underlying technology of all Wonderware products

(9)

75. Notion (4)

Clues down: 1. Invensys solution for looking after your Wonderware

assets 24/7 (8,8)

2. Infra-red (2)

3. Faucet (3)

4. Utilise (3)

5. ___ Lingus (Irish airline) (3)

6. Standards organisation (3)

7. Edible pods of Asian plant also known as “ladies’

fingers” (4)

8. The chosen one (7)

10. Prevarication (3)

11. Preposition (2)

12. Second most populous city in Nevada (4)

15. Tin symbol (2)

18. Criminal habits? (4,5)

19. One of the things that separates humans from

computers (10)

22. Indefinite article (2)

24. Trip agenda (9)

26. Swarming (7)

27. Hectare (2)

29. Specific Gravity (2)

31. Copy siblings (4)

33. Neon symbol (2)

35. Tibetan ox (3)

36. Title (3)

37. Mobile workforce solution from Wonderware (10)

42. Identical pod dwellers (4)

43. Donkey’s name (3)

49. Indefinite article (2)

50. Holiday place (6)

51. United Kingdom (2)

53. Find (6)

55. Jupiter moon (2)

58. Event-Driven Language (3)

60. Circular openings at the apex of domes (5)

63. Denotes that things are fine (2)

65. Girl’s name (4)

66. World Technologies Association (3)

67. John ___ (was he the senior investigating officer at

the Lockerbie air disaster or what?) (3)

68. Conflict (3)

69. The man (2)

72. Thanks (2)

Answer to Protocol crossword #58:

Question: What is the name of the

ArchestrA-based human-level process

enabler?

Answer: WORKFLOW


Achieving competitive and efficient process plant operation is an increasingly tough challenge in today’s fast moving business environment.

Measurement Under Control

Selecting the most reliable and longest life measurement instrumentation is more important than ever. Invensys Foxboro offers time proven innovative measurement solutions that make this possible, leading the way with longer life pH, redox and conductivity measurement sensors and instrumentation.

View our full range of measurement tools and instrumentation at:

www.invensys.co.za or call 0800 INVENSYS for more information


When market tastes change.You’ll be ready.

Monday Tuesday Wednesday

Thursday Friday Saturday

Flexibly manage change, while maintaining product quality, consistency and safety with Wonderware MES software. For more information, visit wonderware.com/FlexibleMES and get a free whitepaper called “Be ready for changing tastes, a new approach to plant software”.


INV-350 MES_Cola-WW-A4.indd 1 9/11/12 1:02 PM

When market tastes change.You’ll be ready.

Monday Tuesday Wednesday

Thursday Friday Saturday

Flexibly manage change, while maintaining product quality, consistency and safety with Wonderware MES software. For more information, visit wonderware.com/FlexibleMES and get a free whitepaper called “Be ready for changing tastes, a new approach to plant software”.


INV-350 MES_Cola-WW-A4.indd 1 9/11/12 1:02 PM

0800 INVENSYS | [email protected] | iom.invensys.co.za

Flexibly manage change, while maintaining product quality, consistency and safety withWonderware MES software. For more information, visit wonderware.com/FlexibleMES and get a free whitepaper called “Be ready for changing tastes, a new approach to plant software”.

Invensys Protocol Magazine – "The Human differentiator – beyond technology"

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Transcript of Invensys Protocol Magazine – "The Human differentiator – beyond technology"