Produktergonomie in der Prozessautomatisierung

Zusammenfassung

Die Produktergonomie befasst sich in der Prozessautomatisierung — der Automatisierung von Anlagen in Branchen wie Chemie, Pharma, Öl & Gas, Wasser/Abwasser — mit einer Reihe verschiedener Kontexte, um sicheres und wirtschaftliches Arbeiten zu ermöglichen. Die Gestaltungsbereiche reichen von der Leitwarte, in der Anlagenfahrer die technischen Prozesse von der Ferne rechnergestützt überwachen und führen, über lokale Bediensysteme an Sensoren und Aktoren für Parametrierung und Diagnose bis hin zur Unterstützung wissensintensiver und sicherheitskritischer Arbeitstätigkeiten mit mobilen Geräten. Der Beitrag stellt die besonderen Anforderungen der Prozessindustrie und den Stand der Technik der Produktergonomie in der Prozessautomatisierung dar und zeigt aktuelle Entwicklungen und Trends auf.

Résumé

L’ergonomie de produit s’occupe de l’automatisation de processus afin de permettre un travail en toute sécurité et rentable d’un point de vue économique, et ce dans une série de contextes différents — de l’automatisation des installations dans les domaines tels que la chimie, la pharmacologie, le pétrole, le gaz, l’eau et les eaux usées. L’organisation des secteurs s’étend depuis les centres de contrôle, y compris des processus techniques de contrôle et de gestion à distance de calculateurs, en passant par des système locaux de commandes sensorielles et des systèmes pour le paramétrage et le diagnostique avec des appareils mobiles de processus critiques en matière de sécurité et intensifs en matière de connaissances. Ce travail montre les exigences particulières de l’industrie de processus et la situation de la technique de l’ergonomie de produit dans les processus d’automatisation et montre le développement et les tendances actuelles.

Abstract

Product ergonomics in the process automation domain is subject to several demanding challenges. First, the systems, processes and regulations and thereof the plants of the different branches of process automation — chemicals, pharma, oil & gas, water/waste water, pulp & paper and food & beverage — show several common features but are quite different in detail. Second, process automation covers three extremely different task contexts that result in different requirements for the design of the human-machine-interfaces (HMI) — control room computer displays, stationary field devices and mobile information systems. The most overt HMIs are found in a plant’s control room which hosts the central means for computer aided process operation. All the information of the thousands of different sensors, actors and information processing units is collected here and presented on display screens. These screens need to be designed to support situation awareness and fast decisions in both normal and abnormal operating conditions. This is addressed by a hierarchical layered task-oriented structure of the information space: i) supervision and navigation, ii) parameterization and monitoring, and iii) error diagnosis and manual control. The later are in particular challenging, because an overwhelming amount of detail information of quite different systems needs to be integrated. Unfortunately, as most of the HMI engineering efforts go into the implementation of the very detailed displays for diagnosis and manual control, these displays are often used for the higher-level tasks as well, even if these displays do not fulfill the requirements exactly. Having a closer look on the engineering systems however, a substantial information gap between the engineering tools of process technology and process automation might give a reason for poor higher-level displays. Closing this gap in an integrated digital plant model by meeting the information needs of product ergonomics makes it possible to implement computer aided support systems for the effective and efficient design of ecological interfaces in process automation. A second challenge to product ergonomics is the variety of the local HMIs of all the thousands of sensors and actuators of a plant. This area of interface design is challenging due to its limited means of interaction due to rough environmental conditions and a primate of cost efficiency. These restrictions lead to a manifold of different solutions and interaction strategies, even for different devices of a single company. Several examples illustrate the benefits of a user centered design process and generalized ergonomic interaction concepts for product platforms. With the advent of digital communication, remote operation of devices became possible for commissioning and maintenance. While end users intensely ask for uniform access, the before mentioned variety is by and large still observable. We argue that there is a general conflict between end user requirements for uniform access and vendor requirements for branding which might be moderated by further product ergonomic research. A final challenge is posed to product ergonomics in process automation by the current success of smart phones in commercial applications: How to adapt and utilize these devices and the development of software to the special requirements of process industries? How to reconcile the short life-cycles of consumer electronics with the long-term perspective of process automation? We argue that the currently dominating and attractive touch-and-slide metaphors of current smart phones are not fit for the demanding work spaces of process automation. Similar to other demanding workspaces like automotive HMI the decomposition into a distributed interactive system opens the way to feasible and adaptable solutions. However, designing mobile systems that may compete with the ease of paper and pencil is a product ergonomic challenge that not only calls for a disciplined approach but also for the extension of established methods. In particular we argue that product ergonomics in mobile information systems needs to bother not only with hardware and software design but also with the information representation in the underlying semantic web. Combining the challenges and requirements of the three distinct areas of product ergonomics in process automation we conclude that there is needs to integrate the models and methods of product ergonomics in the engineering and design processes. In particular all the engineering information collected within a digital plant model may serve as a formal basis for the design of computer aided support systems. Those systems would make it possible to automate large parts of the implementation of interactive products and thus allow engineers and designers to concentrate on that part of an ergonomic product in process automation that makes a difference.