"Our goal is to put the ‘human' back in HMI" Barbara Martinez, principal solutions architect, Schneider Electric, at the company's 2015 Global Automation Conference.
"Our goal is to put the ‘human' back in HMI," Martinez said. The Foxboro Evo Control HMI was one of many products and services showcased during the conference that centered on commitment to functional design and human factors engineering.
"Understanding how people process information and giving them the information they need the way they need it is the absolute heart of human factors engineering," said Grant Le Sueur, senior director, control and safety software, Schneider Electric. "If you don't get this part right, you'll never reach true functional design."
In HMI, the problematic trend of technology-focused, rather than solutions-focused, design has coincided with three major industrial trends:
- Plants are larger and more complex, which has led to increased monitoring load and a lack of understanding;
- Increasing levels of automation have led to operators becoming overloaded with data and becoming disengaged. As a result their role has been reduced to dealing with upsets;
- Centralized operations have led to loss of direct awareness.
Combine all of this and you wind up with overloaded, disengaged operators who are only reacting to upsets. "Imagine if that's how the pilot on your plane operated," she said. "Oops, I'm too high; oops, I'm too low. This is a really terrible way to fly a plane. It's also a really terrible way to control your process."
Martinez said intuitive HMI is designed not around a plant's piping and instrumentation diagrams (P&IDs), but around the people who use them and around solving challenges faced by all plants:
- Avoiding frequent plant upsets that affect production and safety;
- Reducing brain drain and the chance of operator error; and
- Keeping production on target.
Martinez said plants that have integrated modern, high-performance HMI have seen significant improvements over traditional HMI:
- 48% detection rate vs. 10% in detecting abnormal situations before alarms occur;
- 96% success rate vs. 70% in handling abnormal situations; and,
- 10.6 minutes vs. 18.1 minutes in the time required to complete abnormal situation tasks.
"The simple fact is that all of this represents money," Martinez said, adding that unexpected events cost industry $10 billion a year.
Successfully transitioning to human-centered HMI is as much about the process as the program, Martinez said. To that end, Schneider Electric's Situational Awareness team provides consulting, design and training services that involve key team members including, of course, the operators who will use the system.
Le Sueur said the main challenge in transitioning to a new HMI system is the normal resistance to change. "But when operators see how intuitive a human-centered HMI can be, they become the biggest advocates."
Martinez encouraged anyone wishing information on Foxboro Evo Control HMI or the transition process to email the team at [email protected].
About Foxboro Evo Control HMI
The Foxboro Evo Control HMI is designed to simplify engineering efforts and significantly enhance user experience.
Features:
- Simplified design, deployment and maintenance of control strategies and configuration
- Dynamic Appearance Objects based on SAMA symbolism enables automatic self-updates as changes are made
- Plant-wide intelligence with greater visibility, consistency and precision to your operation
- Open and flexible connectivity for seamless collaboration and standardization of all operations data
- Integration of advanced software applications for dramatically increased operational efficiency
Key Benefits
- Optimized engineering workflow
- State-of-the-art situational awareness graphics that leverages best practice HMI standards
- Preserved engineering efforts through re-use and standardization
- Improved decision-making and maximized profitability
- Driven standards and best practices throughout global operations
- Real-time collaboration, synchronization, execution and visualization across your operation
Key Capabilities
- Easily change applications, control programs and workflow in the plant to respond to any business operations issue or take advantage of new opportunities
- Standard operating practices and techniques across the organization, allowing easy cross training and replication of success from site to site
- Symbol wizard that customizes attributes to reduce maintenance
- Template-based implementation to enable site standardization and customization
- Synchronized, role-based responses to normal and abnormal events
- Powerful, easy to use Historian and clients for accurate analysis with no loss of data
- Managed workflows and audit trails to support operational integrity
