Perceptional approach to design of industrial plant monitoring systems

Abstract

In this paper, we have investigated the perceptional attitudes of a massive scale industrial plant staff towards process monitoring systems and focused on human factors that are influential in design of plant monitoring systems. The study is a part of a plant-wide monitoring system which is under development, aimed to help staff to monitor processes and plant performance in detail. The paper first gives focused introduction on large scale enterprise and plant monitoring and management information systems, then discusses human machine interaction relevance of these systems to the staff performance and perception. Examples from the literature and previous work are presented. Primary human factors in proactive monitoring and highly automated systems are briefly discussed. A design survey study follows the introduction and relevant literature sections. The survey is designed to collect perceptional status of the staff against such systems, including the perception of their current performance. Results are analyzed and discussed in order to enhance system design decisions in such plant monitoring systems. We believe that such perceptual studies, performed before attempting to implement large scale monitoring systems that are highly interactive to the existing staff, should be considered as essential part of the design process. The results of this study is being used as inputs in implementation of a recent petroleum plant monitoring system. © 2016 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.