Process Control Environment Research Articles

Optimising data visualisation in the process control and IIoT environments

Abstract In the present context of the 4th Industrial revolution, there is a growing need to get data from different data sources in a standard data format. This paper presents a solution to achieve this convergence in using IoT technology, extracting available data, and making it available to high-level systems in a standard, low latency framework. This paper presents different protocols like OPC UA, Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT), and Constrained Application Protocol(COAP) to achieve this data transportation/acquisition. It also presents an emerging Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) technology, LoRa WAN, to augment the data of the process control system, explicitly extending the range of sensors to wireless data points.

Measuring process control automation benefits through a human‐machine function allocation analysis

AbstractOften technology is introduced into manufacturing and process control environments to partially automate tasks too complex to fully automate. However, it is not always clear how to measure the benefits of such projects. More often than not, automation eliminates but also shifts human work, and broad productivity measures can fail to capture such changes. To this end, this effort describes a manufacturing case study that looks at human‐machine allocation metrics involving a laboratory fermentation unit upgrade. Using a workflow monitoring and function allocation analytic approach, it was determined that upgrading an older microbial culture bioreactor (fermentor) to a new design with intelligent monitoring capabilities resulted in an approximate 17% reduction in dedicated human supervision. This workload reduction allowed scientists to spend less time on repetitive tasks and more time concentrating on other, more open‐ended problems that require more expertize. However, the new technology increased human efforts across other functions, suggesting potential mitigation paths for future technology development. This effort illustrates that the impact of new technology on human‐machine tasking can be quantified through a function allocation analysis and also provide diagnostic information, both of which are critical in understanding any overall added benefit of intelligent systems.

Ergonomic analysis through good manufacturing practice (gmp) training (case: Binjai MSME)

The work environment is one of the most important factors in production. In this paper, a study was conducted on the work environment in MSMEs to determine the safety and health of the work environment in producing products. Specifically, the study was conducted to see the deviation in the application of GMP in MSME. The subjects were 30 MSMEs involved in the research from Binjai Municipalities. This study uses a qualitative analysis method that aims to evaluate the level of application of 14 aspects of GMP and find out the understanding of MSMEs on aspects of GMP. The analysis results show that the types of products with the most considerable deviations from the GMP aspect are Bakery Products and Ready-to-Eat Snacks MSMEs. However, overall, the most urgent aspects to improve are Aspect Process control and Production Location and Environment. The deviation results can reach 100%, indicating that GMP implementation is lacking or does not apply GMP.

The development and validation of a short-duration sustained visual search task for process control environments

This study was designed to validate a short-duration sustained visual search task for the assessment of sustained attention in process control environments. The task consists of 10 short dynamic scenarios, which require participants (N = 121) to monitor simulated operating power transmission interfaces, and identify system faults. A vigilance decrement was demonstrated throughout the sustained visual search task, as evident in increased response latencies and decreased accuracy over time. Further, changes in response latency throughout the sustained visual search task were positively associated with changes in response latency during a 30-min, low signal probability task, a 45-min low signal probability task, and a 45-min high signal probability task. The findings indicate that the sustained visual search task may be a valid alternative to a longer-duration process control task for experimental studies, and is likely to be of value for assessments of the capacity for sustained attention of operators in process control environments.

Effects of social stress on performance and strain in complex multiple task environments

While stress has been an important research area in the field of ergonomics, research on social stress and on the combination of stressors is largely lacking. This study examined the effects of social stress on psychological and physiological strain and performance. As an exploratory research question we looked at the combined effects of social stress and noise. Fifty-one male student participants were tested for 2 h using a computer-based simulation of a process control environment with multiple tasks. Social stress (TSST) and noise (80 dB) were varied experimentally. During the task, we repeatedly measured primary and secondary task performance, subjective strain, and psychophysiological strain (cortisol, heart rate). We found a main effect of social stress on physiological strain, both on cortisol and heart rate, but no main effects of social stress on subjective strain and performance. These results suggest that maintaining performance under stress comes at the cost of physiological strain. Practitioner summary: Although the presence of social stress is common at work, little experimental work has been done. Our experiment provides empirical evidence for negative effects of social stress on physiological stress responses while subjective strain and performance decrements could not be detected. Abbreviations: ANOVA: analysis of variance; b/min: beats per minute; CAMS: cabin air management system; CO2: carbon dioxide; dB: decibel; Df: degrees of freedom; ECG: electrocardiography; h: hours; Hz: hertz; M: mean; min: minutes; N: sample size; nmol/l: nanomol per liter; O2: oxygen; pm: post meridiem; SD: standard deviation; SE: standard error; sec/s: seconds; TSST: trier social stress test

Cue utilisation reduces effort but increases arousal during a process control task

Process control environments are characterised by rapid changes in work demands, the successful response to which is dependent upon the availability of cognitive resources. Since high cue utilisation is associated with a reduction in cognitive load and a consequent release of residual resources, it was hypothesised that participants with high cue utilisation would experience lower subjective arousal and lower physiological effort in response to increases in the work demands associated with a simulated rail control task. A total of 41 participants completed a 10 min, low work demand period, followed by a 10 min, high work demand condition. High cue utilisation was associated with a reduction in systolic blood pressure and the maintenance of sustained, superior performance in response to high work demands. However, an increase in subjective arousal was also evident. The outcomes have implications for the selection and assessment of operators of high reliability, dynamic, process control environments.

An evaluation of the FRWMA chart for dependent interval-valued data

How to construct a control chart with dependent interval-valued data is an important topic in the industrialization, economy, environment and management fields for the statistical process control. The dependent and continuous data is usually detected and recorded, sometimes, and this data can be applied to analysis. When this data is used to construct a control chart with mean which the degree of variation of this set of data can be ignored. Hence, this paper proposes the fuzzy relative weight moving average (FRWMA) chart for dependent interval-valued data set to monitor the crisp values of process. Empirical researches are illustrated the application for designing FRWMA chart. As well as more related practical phenomena can be explained by this appropriate definition of FRWMA chart.

Evolution of strength and failure of SCC during early hydration

The early strength evolution of self-consolidating concrete (SCC) is studied by a set of non-standard mechanical tests for compressive, tensile, shear and bending failure. The results are applicable in an industrial environment for process control, e.g. of slip casting with adaptive molds in robotic fabrication. A procedure for collapsing data to a master evolution curve is presented that allows to distinguish two regimes in the evolution. In the first, the material is capable of undergoing large localized plastic deformation, as expected from thixotropic yield stress fluids. This is followed by a transition to cohesive frictional material behavior dominated by crack growth. The typical differences in tensile and compressive strength of hardened concrete are observed to originate at the transition. Finally, the evolution of a limit surface in principal stress space is constructed and discussed.

On the effectiveness of performance-based adaptive automation

ABSTRACTThis article examines the effectiveness of different forms of performance-based adaptive automation (PBAA). Using data from three experiments (N = 10, N = 38, N = 40), different models of algorithm design were compared for their effectiveness in driving PBAA. The following components were varied: type of task (i.e. primary or secondary tasks), baseline of performance data (e.g. moving average), and triggering criterion (i.e. level of deviation from standard performance). The data were generated by operators working with a computer-based simulation of a process control environment. The results showed that none of the models enjoyed a convincing level of effectiveness. The automation algorithms generally achieved higher levels of miss prevention than false alarm prevention. Surprisingly, primary task performance was generally better at driving PBAA than secondary task performance. The results suggest that it may be difficult to design an effective algorithm of PBAA if the work environment is highly complex.

Novel Design of Collaborative Automation Platform Using Real-Time Data Distribution Service Middleware for an Optimum Process Control Environment

Refining and petrochemical processing facilities utilize various process control applications to raise productivity and enhance plant operation. Client–server communication model is used for integrating these highly interacting applications across multiple network layers utilized in distributed control systems. This paper presents an optimum process control environment by merging sequential and regulatory control, advanced regulatory control, multivariable control, unit-based process control, and plant-wide advanced process control into a single collaborative automation platform to ensure optimum operation of processing equipment for achieving maximum yield of all manufacturing facilities. The main control module is replaced by a standard real-time server. The input/output racks are physically and logically decoupled from the controller by converting them into distributed autonomous process interface systems. Real-time data distribution service middleware is used for providing seamless cross-vendor interoperable communication among all process control applications and distributed autonomous process interface systems. Detailed performance analysis was conducted to evaluate the average communication latency and aggregate messaging capacity among process control applications and distributed autonomous process interface systems. The overall performance results confirm the viability of the new proposal as the basis for designing an optimal collaborative automation platform to handle all process control applications. It also does not impose any inherent limit on the aggregate data messaging capacity, making it suitable for scalable automation platforms.

Handling of variable wireless latency and updating frequency in PI controllers

In closed loop process control with wireless measurements it must be ensured that communication packet dropouts and variable latency is handled properly with respect to the impact on the controlled process. A procedure for automatic adjustment of the controller parameters is presented. The main property is to maintain the closed loop stability margin in presence of variable communication latency. The sampling rates in wireless instrumentation are usually chosen to be quite slow to save battery power in the transmitters, so both selecting the appropriate sampling rates and handling of the real transmission characteristics in a closed loop process control environment require attention. The presented algorithm can handle typical wireless communication errors, and can also be used to deliberately alter the sampling rate based on the actual disturbance level and by that save battery power in calm periods. The algorithm is based on the SIMC tuning rules.

Experience of automation failures in training: effects on trust, automation bias, complacency and performance

This work examined the effects of operators’ exposure to various types of automation failures in training. Forty-five participants were trained for 3.5 h on a simulated process control environment. During training, participants either experienced a fully reliable, automatic fault repair facility (i.e. faults detected and correctly diagnosed), a misdiagnosis-prone one (i.e. faults detected but not correctly diagnosed) or a miss-prone one (i.e. faults not detected). One week after training, participants were tested for 3 h, experiencing two types of automation failures (misdiagnosis, miss). The results showed that automation bias was very high when operators trained on miss-prone automation encountered a failure of the diagnostic system. Operator errors resulting from automation bias were much higher when automation misdiagnosed a fault than when it missed one. Differences in trust levels that were instilled by the different training experiences disappeared during the testing session.Practitioner Summary: The experience of automation failures during training has some consequences. A greater potential for operator errors may be expected when an automatic system failed to diagnose a fault than when it failed to detect one.

Addressing alarm flood situations in the process industries through alarm summary display design and alarm response strategy

Despite efforts to improve alarm systems, alarm flooding remains a significant problem in the process industries. Alarm summary displays for managing alarm floods do not fully support operator needs when responding to plant upsets. This Abnormal Situation Management Consortium (asmconsortium.org) funded study tested two alarm summary display designs in a simulated process control environment using twenty-four certified operators. The first display represented the traditional list-based alarm summary display typically used in control rooms. The second display was a new alarm tracker summary display, which showed alarms in a time series represented by icons and a short alarm description. Results of the simulated evaluation showed that when operators used a formal alarm response strategy that focused the new alarm tracker summary display by equipment area, they responded to more process events overall and had fewer false responses compared to when operators used the traditional list-based alarm summary. Relevance to industryNew alarm summary displays can combine the benefits of list-based displays with time series presentation of alarm information. Process operators can be trained on formal alarm response strategies and should be given ample time to familiarize themselves with new displays as part of an effective deployment strategy.

Safety related rule violations investigated experimentally

Previous research in Human Factors has shown that improving safety in organizations requires the investigation of the interplay between organizational and person-related factors affecting rule violations. Two prestudies were conducted to test the validity of a newly designed experimental setting for investigating the influence of safety audits (organizational factors) on operators’ rule compliance behaviour in a simulated process control environment. The simulation environment simulates a production year of a waste water purification plant ( WaTrSim-Annual). The process requires the operator to decide in every simulated week (48 in total) whether to start-up the plant using the mandatory safe start-up procedure or to use an illegitimate start-up procedure, which leads to a higher individual income. Two notable observations were made. Astonishingly, in the first prestudy (N = 5), participants used the illegitimate start-up procedure i.e. 76% of all cases (27 of 36 possible violations), despite the fact there was a fine if participants’ violations were uncovered by the safety audit. To reduce the use of the illegitimate procedure, in the second prestudy (N=10), the training of the procedures was revised and the fine was raised. These modifications led to a less frequent use of the illegitimate procedure, but simultaneously led to more "soft violations" in terms of "fine-tuning" the mandatory procedure to scrape the safety limits. As a preliminary conclusion, the prevention of violations should include a just in time on the job training for refreshing the skills required to follow the rules.

Designing automation for complex work environments under different levels of stress

This article examines the effectiveness of different forms of static and adaptable automation under low- and high-stress conditions. Forty participants were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions, comparing three levels of static automation (low, medium and high) and one level of adaptable automation, with the environmental stressor (noise) being varied as a within-subjects variable. Participants were trained for 4 h on a simulation of a process control environment, called AutoCAMS, followed by a 2.5-h testing session. Measures of performance, psychophysiology and subjective reactions were taken. The results showed that operators preferred higher levels of automation under noise than under quiet conditions. A number of parameters indicated negative effects of noise exposure, such as performance impairments, physiological stress reactions and higher mental workload. It also emerged that adaptable automation provided advantages over low and intermediate static automation, with regard to mental workload, effort expenditure and diagnostic performance. The article concludes that for the design of automation a wider range of operational scenarios reflecting adverse as well as ideal working conditions needs to be considered.

An approach for failure recognition in IP‐based industrial control networks and systems

SUMMARYIndustrial control networks (ICNs) and systems support robust communications of devices in process control or manufacturing environments. ICN proprietary protocols are being migrated to Ethernet/IP networks in order to merge various different types of networks into a single common network. ICNs are deployed in mission‐critical operations, which require a maximum level of network stability. Network stability is often described using several categories of network performance quality‐of‐service metrics, such as throughput, delay, and loss measurements. The question arises as to whether these network performance metrics are sufficient to run valuable diagnostics of ICN components and their communications. Any abnormal decision with respect to typical IP traffic behavior does not necessarily coincide with ICN fault cases. A precise and specific diagnostic technique for ICNs is required to remove the uncertainty in detecting problems. However, existing Ethernet/IP diagnosis tools have not been able to fully handle fault symptoms and mainly focus on network diagnostics rather than process or device diagnostics. This paper demonstrates that the absence of advanced fault diagnosis techniques leads to the development of new methodologies that are suitazble for ICN. We describe unique traffic characteristics and categorize the faults of ICN. We also propose a fault diagnosis, prediction, and adaptive decision methodologies, and verify them with real‐world ICN data from the steel‐making company POSCO. Our experience in developing the fault diagnosis system provides a firm guideline to understand the fault management mechanisms in large ICNs. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

What do we mean by Human-Centered Design of Life-Critical Systems?

Human-centered design is not a new approach to design. Aerospace is a good example of a life-critical systems domain where participatory design was fully integrated, involving experimental test pilots and design engineers as well as many other actors of the aerospace engineering community. This paper provides six topics that are currently part of the requirements of the Ph.D. Program in Human-Centered Design of the Florida Institute of Technology (FIT.) This Human-Centered Design program offers principles, methods and tools that support human-centered sustainable products such as mission or process control environments, cockpits and hospital operating rooms. It supports education and training of design thinkers who are natural leaders, and understand complex relationships among technology, organizations and people. We all need to understand what we want to do with technology, how we should organize ourselves to a better life and finally find out whom we are and have become. Human-centered design is being developed for all these reasons and issues.

Assessing and improving SCADA security in the Dutch drinking water sector

International studies have shown that information security for process control systems, in particular SCADA, is weak. Many of the critical infrastructure (CI) services critically depend on process control systems. Therefore, any vulnerability in the protection of process control systems in CI may result in serious consequences for citizens and society. In order to understand their sector-wide security posture, the drinking water sector in The Netherlands benchmarked the information security of their process control environment. Large differences in the individual security postures of the ten drinking water companies were found. Good Practices for SCADA security were developed based upon the benchmark results. This paper discusses the simple but effective approach taken to perform the benchmark, the way the results were reported to the drinking water companies, and the way in which the SCADA information security good practices were developed. Apart from some high-level indications of areas requiring more security attention, no actual security posture results are presented in this paper since the study data contain company and national sensitive information. For the same reason, the figures in this paper are based on artificial data.

Explicit control of adaptive automation under different levels of environmental stress

This article examines the effectiveness of three different forms of explicit control of adaptive automation under low- and high-stress conditions, operationalised by different levels of noise. In total, 60 participants were assigned to one of three types of automation design (free, prompted and forced choice). They were trained for 4 h on a highly automated simulation of a process control environment, called AutoCAMS. This was followed by a 4-h testing session under noise exposure and quiet conditions. Measures of performance, psychophysiology and subjective reactions were taken. The results showed that all three modes of explicit control of adaptive automation modes were able to attenuate the negative effects of noise. This was partly due to the fact that operators opted for higher levels of automation under noise. It also emerged that forced choice showed marginal advantages over the two other automation modes. Statement of Relevance: This work is relevant to the design of adaptive automation since it emphasises the need to consider the impact of work-related stressors during task completion. During the presence of stressors, different forms of operator support through automation may be required than under more favourable working conditions.

A multi-level approach of evaluating crew resource management training: a laboratory-based study examining communication skills as a function of team congruence

The article proposes a multi-level approach for evaluating communication skills training (CST) as an important element of crew resource management (CRM) training. Within this methodological framework, the present work examined the effectiveness of CST in matching or mismatching team compositions with regard to hierarchical status and competence. There is little experimental research that evaluated the effectiveness of CRM training at multiple levels (i.e. reaction, learning, behaviour) and in teams composed of members of different status and competence. An experiment with a two (CST: with vs. without) by two (competence/hierarchical status: congruent vs. incongruent) design was carried out. A total of 64 participants were trained for 2.5 h on a simulated process control environment, with the experimental group being given 45 min of training on receptiveness and influencing skills. Prior to the 1-h experimental session, participants were assigned to two-person teams. The results showed overall support for the use of such a multi-level approach of training evaluation. Stronger positive effects of CST were found for subjective measures than for objective performance measures. Statement of Relevance: This work provides some guidance for the use of a multi-level evaluation of CRM training. It also emphasises the need to collect objective performance data for training evaluation in addition to subjective measures with a view to gain a more accurate picture of the benefits of such training approaches.