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Posts by mycontrolroom

Fatigue Risk Management Is Just About Keeping People Awake

Fatigue Risk Management is focused on two import aspects: alertness and fatigue that leads to falling asleep. Studies show that many shift workers acknowledge falling asleep at work due to irregular work-rest schedules. Nodding off has in many places been an acceptable byproduct of shift work but is extremely dangerous for process control operators who…

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Fatigue Risk Management Systems Could Bring New Life to Your Tired Operators

Recent studies of workers have identified that job dissatisfaction along with a previous history of MSDs were the two most significant predictive factors for employees reporting work-related injuries. A 2013 Gallup poll finds that 70% of US workers are dissatisfied with their jobs. This results in a $550 Billion loss in productivity. Shift-workers, particularly those…

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3 Things to Change to Better Manage Operator Workload

Operator workload is driven by three main topics: The physical equipment they monitor. The interactions they do on a day-to-day basis. The automation system. If you want to influence the workload you must make changes to one of these three areas of influence. The easiest one to comprehend is the physical equipment under their control.…

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Learn why the alarm management safety layer is flawed and what to do to make sure abnormal situations are detected, managed, and prevented.

  The operators job is to keep the process running at optimal capacity. Operators have a direct effect on quality, they prevent unplanned downtime, respond to safety critical events, and can provide valuable feedback that can save companies millions of dollars. They are a direct link to millions of dollars’ worth of equipment. Unfortunately, they…

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Control Room Operators – The Ugly Step Children

It’s true, operators are treated like ugly step children and the sad fact is they are the eyes, ears, and puppet masters of the process. There must be a good reason we have them. How much more value could they bring if we changed the way we looked at them? Is it time for a…

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Join us at the Lin & Associates 2017 Workshop

Ian Nimmo will be presenting: The Enemy Within Lurking within our control rooms is a demon, who strikes at the worst possible time in the life of a control room. During the early hours of the morning driven by poor lighting, unhealthy environmental controls, fatigue takes its toll – with no fatigue countermeasures in place…

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How to Get Management to Fund Your Alarm Management Efforts

Most of my clients have already implemented some form of alarm improvement process, from low hanging fruit nuisance alarm reduction to full blown alarm rationalization and documentation. For most, their efforts reflect the amount of support they received from management and the resources they had available at the time. Unfortunately, after nearly 20 years, our…

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Alarm Management and Operator Intervention

(A Safety Layer with Too Many Holes) I’m sure you have heard of Independent Safety Layers, alarm management and operator intervention being one of them. Operators are the fist line of defense when alarms activate so they are a safety layer, however,  just because you rationalized your alarms does not mean the operator will respond in…

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How Many Operators Do You Need?

To assess the ability to reduce or increase staffing levels, the facility must take an honest look at the quality of the workforce. How are console operators chosen? The move to a dedicated console-operator post should be treated as an upgrade in duties and pay. The selection should not be based on seniority, but on…

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The Paradigm Shift in the Control Room

By Paul Noble, CEO, Activu Corporation Today’s control room is not what it was a decade ago.  Gone are the days where these spaces were based on analog or nascent digital video technology.  Control rooms have instead transformed into networked information centers that play a major role in operations; spaces where information sharing, communication and…

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UCDS working with Sunoco

UCDS Helps Sunoco Design a New centralized control facility that aims to optimize their Philadelphia refinery Console Operator Bill Johnson, a 24-year Sunoco veteran, makes changes in the operations of the new low sulfur fuels unit from the new central control room. The recently finished low sulfur gasoline unit is the first plant to be…

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Operators Can Operate at 100% Capacity (Optimization Means Money)

Arnold Oliver of Worsley Alumina challenged his process control group to improve process efficiency. The goal was to get operators to set setpoints closer to the maximum process capacity. To achieve this, operators needed an environment that was optimized. Operator effectiveness was the major focus for changes that proved to provide significant returns on their…

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Control Room Operators and the Key Hole Effect

The key hole effect: Your control room operator is monitoring a process with several loops and several points, they have multiple screens and each screen has hundreds of graphics to navigate through, uh oh, several alarms start to activate! The operator begins to navigate through several graphics to determine the problem but has a very limited view because there are so many screens to…

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Grey Scaled Graphics

Why Switch Your Rainbow Graphics to a Boring Shade of Grey? First of all, you’re not just changing the background color on your existing graphics, your reducing the number of graphics by incorporating human factors into the design, using analog objects, trends, and regrouping objects so that the graphics provide visual interpretation of what’s important…

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New Book – Control Room Design guide

We have recently released a new book on Control Room Design. Here is the summary: Since the introduction of distributed control systems into control rooms, the mining, refining, chemical, and power industries have lived with, and suffered from, many behavioral problems common with this design. When Human Factors/Ergonomic design is introduced into a centralized control…

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UCDS December 2015 News: Automation Safety Webinar

It has been a very different year for UCDS. Our traditional work patterns dramatically changed which meant we did a lot more travelling than usual. I started the year recovering from foot surgery for a snapped Achilles issue but managed to make a trip in March to Sweden to visit with CGM and work on…

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Borregaard Biorefinery Moves to a Centralized Control Room With the Help of UCDS

Borregaard biorefinery pulp and paper operation in Sarpsborg, Norway, was originally established in 1889. Over the years, significant investments have been made in the facility, including a new pulp-drying machine; new cutting, baling and, reeling equipment; and conversion of the bleaching plant to sulphite pulp. The original digester house, built in the early 1950s, was…

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Podcast 9- Staffing Studies Part 2

Ian Nimmo, President of User Centered Design Services, discusses the importance of proper staffing and workload levels in part one of this two part series. To learn more about UCDS and Ian Nimmo visit MyControlRoom.com

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Podcast 8- Staffing Studies Part 1

Ian Nimmo, President of User Centered Design Services, discusses the importance of proper staffing and workload levels in part one of this two part series. To learn more about UCDS and Ian Nimmo visit MyControlRoom.com

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Navajo Refining New Mexico Builds a New Training Center

The following was written by Bill Stephens of SourceGas. Navajo Refining Company is part of the HollyFrontier Corporation. We are an oil refining company located in southeast New Mexico. There are approximately 360 employees at our site. While in the development of a new Training Center, Navajo Refining needed design ideas. We contacted UCDS and they designed…

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SourceGas Pipeline Complies with PHMSA 192.631

The following was written by Bill Stephens of SourceGas. SourceGas LLC (“SourceGas”) and its subsidiaries serve approximately 425,000 customers and operate over 19,340 miles of natural gas distribution, gathering and transmission pipeline, as well as storage facilities in Arkansas, Colorado, Nebraska and Wyoming. SourceGas and its subsidiaries also provide gas transportation, in-home HVAC and appliance service…

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Invista Embraces Situation Awareness and Control Room Design

The following was written by Driscoll Staley of Invista, describing his situation awareness and control room design experience with UCDS. The Victoria nylon plant was constructed over 60 years ago and remains a key global supplier of intermediates. Each production unit represents a different molecule required for nylon production and is operated as separate business unit. Control…

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Podcast 6- Workshops Part 1

In part 1 of a 2 part episode of the My Control Room Podcast, Ian Nimmo, president of User Centered Design Services, discusses the workshops provided by UCDS and the impact they can have on the functionality of a control room.

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Sasol Lake Charles improves HMI with UCDS

The following was written by David Smith, Process Control Engineer at Sasol. Sasol is an international integrated energy and chemicals company that leverages the talent and expertise of our more than 32,400 people working in 37 countries. We develop and commercialize technologies, and build and operate world-scale facilities to produce a range of high-value product streams, including liquid…

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Podcast 5- Operator Fatigue Part 1

In this episode of the My Control Room Podcast Ian Nimmos discusses the damaging effects of operator fatigue and the ways companies can increase performance and decrease fatigue. To learn more about Ian Nimmo and UCDS please visit MyControlRoom.com

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