Production Manager: "Situational awareness and operator response are key".

"The process upset cost approximately $2.5 million in lost revenue. The correct operator action and/or engineering interlock control would have avoided all of it".

It is extremely valuable to improve operator performance. Ultimately, we want to get process controls leadership to understand the importance of operator response during abnormal situations and why we focus to improve performance during normal operations. Unfortunately, so many overlook the importance of the board operator’s tasks and responsibilities.

We know that the SIS (safety system) is fail safe for potential failures and safeguards are put in place to prevent issues. The operator can prevent the SIS from activating and manage failures assuming they have all the information they need to know when “that failure” happens.  

It’s hard to describe in a few words the importance of improving operator performance because you have to address so many things like, the workload, making sure they can manage the workload when things go from normal to abnormal very quickly, alarm management, display design using situational awareness objects and level 1-4 design principles, screen hardware sizes, locations, and number of screens based on human limitations, designing an ergonomic console, and incorporating all operator tasks and user requirementsinto the design of the control room. 

All of these things fall into the "Operator Response" category that process engineers understand. However, so many people do not rank these things very high, or they don’t rank them together.

Preventing the SIS from activating and reducing Emergency situations can be accomplished when we ensure the operators can respond in time. A recent conversation with a local Production Manager says: Situational awareness and operator response are key. We just had two straight months of production records crash to a halt after a column carried paste over into a vent system. The operator did not make an error – but he was not aware of the specific scenario that created the event and so he could and did not take the proper action to return the system back to normal. A simple reduction in feed to the column would have prevented 5+ days of downtime. The control system indicated an abnormal numerical value to him but did not alarm (alarm was not set up on one of the parameters that would have informed him of the issue).

Failures like this are common. However, they usually do not get fixed until after a major loss or injury. In the case above there were multiple issues. Some operators catch things like this and act quickly but when they miss it, we must ask why the operator did not see the problem. We must go back to the drawing board and look at abnormal situations, operator workload, alarms, displays, data presentation, and the operator’s environment and management systems to ensure all potential hazards can be detected and managed in time.

www.mycontrolroom.com

smaddox@mycontrolroom.com