(48a) Change Your Board Operator to a Process Manager with State-Based Control

Digital control systems can provide a great deal of information very quickly to operations.  With current staffing levels for day to day operations abnormal situations can cause information overload beyond what can reasonably be responded to in the appropriate amount of time.  State based control maximizes the digital control systems ability to detect and convey abnormal situations through dynamic alarm or state based management.  Since what is normal and abnormal change based on the state of the facility not all possible alarms are relevant to operations in every state.  Properly implemented state based control gives operators relevant alarms in the proper priority for required actions for the situation at hand.

 State based control goes beyond dynamic alarm management where it effectively informs operations of required actions to prevent undesirable consequences.   State based control manages the outputs of the process through operating state of the process.    States include startup, shutdown and emergency situations as well as grade and product changes.  States can also include managing degradations to optimize performance for equipment failures and process upsets to minimize impact and return the process to optimal performance as quickly as possible.

 Implementation of this strategy changes the classic board operator to a process manager that approves steps in the automated procedure. This greatly reduces the training requirement for competence and allows every shift to operate exactly the same way.  The operator is a more efficient resource, performing tasks in a prioritized manner that requires human intervention. This result is bottom line improvements to safety, quality, and production.  Knowledge capture is effectively embedded in the control system so that the best operating knowledge is always on the board.