Plant Services - August 2008 - (Page 30) MANAGEMENT Personnel “The system is preloaded with the models needed to support a user’s technology,” says Scott Brady, director of marketing and ODR, SKF. “We might have to add some special aspects for a specific piece of equipment, but that part is small compared to the standard information.” The plant can use the same editing tool to make changes to variables such as rules and detection levels, or to add information from other sources such as engineering and purchasing. In practice, as an expert nears retirement, “We set up the system with content, get Old Joe and go through it with him,” Brady says. “Perhaps the settings for temperatures or vibration will have to be changed. Old Joe might say the pipe starts shaking and you’ll pick it up. When the process interacts, we’ll use OPC and pick up the process conditions to set the rules.” After Old Joe is gone, if the system says there’s a fault, a new technician can see why Old Joe said it’s a problem. “It’s not a black box,” Brady says. Plants are trying to monitor more equipment with fewer people, and many find that there are too many data to look at. “You can use it as a highly technical filter,” Brady adds. “It looks at all the data and tells you which parts to look at.” At a plant in Brazil, “One of our contracts has 5,000 pieces of equipment and two analysts on contract,” says Luis Econom, SKF product line manager, software. “They can do the job because they’re presented with the information they need on the critical assets.” Get more from controls Your automation and controls might be holding a lot of information about your facility. Some plants are leveraging the expertise and historical data embedded in advanced process control (APC) and change-management systems to empower operators, pinpoint process problems and expedite repairs. “The new generation of workers expects information on demand, from their experience with Google and the Web, rather than by studying or by reading manuals,” says Don Hart, vice president, Rockwell Automation Pavilion marketing (www.pavtech.com). LeveraGe the expertise and historicaL data embedded in advanced process controL (apc) and chanGe-manaGement systems. APC can handle disturbances and non-steady-state conditions such as startups and shutdowns where operators traditionally ran under manual control using their experience. This can be helpful in complex processes. “We have a polymer plant in Canada with 1,300 variables,” Hart says. “It’s way beyond operator capabilities.” Pavilion Technologies is widely known for APC and emission compliance/virtual analyzer packages. In 2007, Pavilion expanded into production and performance-management software to improve visibility of APC performance with information such as time on control, time at constraints and valve performance metrics. This system has been extended to display metrics and analytics of entire plants. Meanwhile, change-management systems guard against trouble on a much simpler scale by unobtrusively backing up variables into larger programs. During normal operations, any changes, tweaks and modifications are being captured for change management, disaster recovery and calibration information. “Technicians can store standard operating procedures, predefined actions or variables in an integrated system, at August 2008 “I think every company should consider starting its own Wiki. We put everything in ours: client information, progress reports, etc. It’s searchable and much more convenient than e-mail threads. We have nine people on our international team, most with English as a second language. E-mail, instant messaging, teleconferences and Wikis – I’ve tried them all and the Wiki is best for aggregating information and keeping records. Search is so much better than it used to be. Every company should keep track of what they’re doing in a large database.” – Rob Bretz, team leader, SKF Internet Get Wikied 30 www.PLANTSERVICES.com http://www.pavtech.com http://www.PLANTSERVICES.com
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