Chemical Engineering August 2014 - 22

Newsfront
Software for the
human element
N
ew software tools address
common issues, such as disorganized
data and a streamlined
workforce, through
the use of simplified methods of
presenting information, alerts and
suggested actions. These tools are
designed to increase human reliability
and make chemical processing
facilities safer and more reliable
and more efficient.
Improving safety
" One of the biggest issues for processors
is that information regarding
safety, instrument reliability
and procedures is all locked into different
silos, " says Andrew Soignier,
vice president, Chemical, Oil and
Gas Solutions with Ventyx, an ABB
company (Houston; www.ventyx.
com). " This makes the information
inconsistent. In addition, most of
the times the reports and information
generated by disparate systems
are very backward looking. "
He says key performance indicators
(KPIs) and metrics in processing
plants are often weeks old by
the time the information is analyzed.
" The decisions that were required
at the time of the risk are
in the past tense now, " says Soignier.
" When it comes to risk management,
people need information
right now, in realtime. "
One of the key areas of a processsafety-management
solution should
be managing operations with confidence
and giving people a true look
into their operational risks as those
risks occur, continues Soignier.
" Where's the vulnerability coming
from right now? What decisions are
people making currently that could
affect the process and increase their
risk of a hazardous event?
" A solution needs to provide key information
and decision support based
upon the current, at-the-moment
risks and present prioritized available
actions that optimize activities
and reduce those risks, " he explains.
This, he says, can be done by giving
operators visibility of all of the
information that is currently spread
across multiple systems and various
spreadsheets in a realtime environment,
accompanied by prioritized
suggested actions. " The key is not
just another tool that tells them that
they have a problem. Rather, the key
is in the action piece and tying this
action into a procedure that can be
done to mitigate the risk, " explains
Soignier. " It removes the guesswork
and provides timely actions, thus
simplifying risk reduction. "
The company's Process Safety
Management solution does this.
The software was designed to give
chemical, and oil-and-gas companies
an enterprise-wide view of process-safety
risks, enabling clients
to track deviations to safeguards,
evaluate the risks and prioritize
corrective actions in a timely manner.
The tool takes safety beyond
traditional instrumented monitoring
functions and extends it into
everyday operations, maintenance
and management. It provides situational
awareness and visibility of
managed risks, contextual information
to facilitate decision support
and procedural automation of work
processes (Figure 1).
Similarly, PAS (Houston; www.
pas.com) offers an Operations Management
Solution that is designed
to help improve the presentation
of the information that goes to the
frontline operators so that they may
more easily make good decisions
and keep the plant running safely,
says Mark Carrigan, vice president
of marketing with PAS.
" One of the areas that has been
lacking in software tools in the past
is how we presented information to
22 ChemiCal engineering www.Che.Com august 2014
New software
makes plant personnel
more effective
by providing quality,
actionable
information
the operators regarding everything
from the design of the graphics to
the alarm systems to managing the
process limits that the operators
had to deal with, " he says. " We, as
software developers, didn't always
take into consideration the human
element and all that the operator
has to deal with at any given moment.
We were throwing tons of
information and data at operators
without a lot of context and it made
it really hard for them to figure out
what's going on inside the plant and
keep the plant running safely. "
But all that is changing with the
company's PlantState Suite of software.
" What we did here is optimize
the operator cockpit so they get really
good information at the right
time to keep the plant running
safely, " explains Carrigan. " The operator
is key to overall plant safety
and this [software] presents the information
he needs in such a way
that it can actually be used to make
up-to-the moment decisions. "
The PlantState Suite includes four
solutions: High-Performance Human-Machine
Interface, Alarm Management,
Boundary Management
and Control Loop Performance.
" In the past, the graphics were
schematics and drawings with
numbers representing current
values, which isn't really the best
way to convey process health information, "
admits Carrigan. " This
meant the operator usually waited
for alarms to know that the process
was out of control and that made
him reactive, rather than proactive. "
Instead, PAS's new solution
transforms these operator displays
from the traditional schematic style
to an intuitive visualization of data
by enabling at-a-glance situation
http://www.ventyx http://www.pas.com http://www.Che.Com
Chemical Engineering August 2014

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