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PROCESS AUTOMATION HMIs HELP YOU MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR DATA


Operator effectiveness and efficiency are optimised when the right information is presented via easily understood graphics on intuitive, secure HMIs, says Mariana Dionisio, a senior product manager at Emerson


oday’s process manufacturing facilities operate in a landscape that is rapidly changing from that of just ten years ago. Retirements have dramatically reduced the pool of experienced operators in the control room, while the growing need for efficiency, sustainability, and flexibility have led to increased workloads and more responsibility for leaner teams. With time and training, even the newest operators can gain the required experience, but in the meantime, plants need to empower their current operators to make smarter and faster decisions – regardless of experience level.


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Fortunately, this experienced personnel shortage comes just as new digital software and technologies are improving automation. More than ever before, automation technologies can collate data from multiple domains and present it as actionable information for better decision making. Nowhere is this more important than in the control room, where improved situational awareness – delivered through intuitive, secure human machine interfaces (HMIs) – helps operations teams make the most of every person in the plant. Ultimately, the right HMI makes everyone more efficient and effective in their day-to-day tasks, improving safety and other facets of operations. For decades, plants have created highly customised graphics for their HMIs, attempting to integrate and present data from multiple applications, in the hope of


24 APRIL 2023 | PROCESS & CONTROL


making their operators more effective. Consolidating all the data requested by operators into the HMI often resulted in overcrowded displays that decreased situational awareness and operator performance.


Furthermore, these convoluted graphics were frequently created using complex custom coding. Custom-scripted solutions introduce additional points of failure in the system and result in maintenance issues when the people who originally created them are no longer available. Moreover, making any changes to such a system is typically time- consuming and requires extensive expertise. The most successful manufacturers today are moving away from this model, instead choosing HMI solutions designed for high performance operations and improved situational awareness, right out of the box. Advanced HMI software is built from the ground up with security, intuitive operation, and scalability in mind. Moving to such a system will deliver improved performance, and it will continue to deliver value across a facility’s lifecycle as operations change to meet a more mobile, connected future. While there are many HMI software solutions available, the best solutions share several key characteristics designed to make them more effective from the moment they are installed. Best-in-class solutions offer features that make HMIs easy to create, navigate, and operate. By focusing on these three key areas,


operations teams can more easily select an HMI solution that will deliver improved situational awareness and operator performance for every operator in the plant, regardless of expertise or personal preference. For example, Emerson's DeltaV Live is designed to help teams build high- performance, highly intuitive HMIs out of the box (see image above).


Today’s best in class HMI software makes it easy to collect and present data from a wide array of different sources such as web applications – including other HMIs such as those from programmable logic controllers – directly into distributed control system HMI graphics for one cohesive view into the process. In a few clicks, users can securely add permitted information from websites, applications such as advanced control and analytics, and other operations software directly into the primary HMI display. This ability to easily and securely integrate disparate information sources into the HMI screen is important because it empowers operators to access other relevant sources of information from the HMI display. This can be done without navigating to other windows or applications, which can distract the operator from focusing on the process. The best modern HMI packages also provide extensive out-of-the-box libraries for easy creation and maintenance of software components, such as faceplates and other graphical objects. To accommodate the wide variety of


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