As human beings, we all have our productive and unproductive days. Is there anything worse than waking up on a Monday morning and thinking about all the upcoming weekly jobs? What about the daily must-dos and things missed last week? It can be difficult to focus the mind on the task at hand, especially with other jobs waiting in the wings and other issues popping up unexpectedly. This problem can be applied to all sectors and job roles – just ask the IT manager at OE Towers as he runs up and down the office.
In industry, the maintenance engineer and maintenance department are indispensable. If an asset is broken, it needs to be fixed. If a line is playing up, maintenance needs to be carried out and progress tracked. If colleagues are waiting on new kit, it needs to be installed. But what working methods and technologies are out there so that maintenance and repair tasks can be prioritised and more importantly, remembered?
TRADITIONAL
Before the rise of the internet, the trusty pen and paper was the answer… and in some cases, still is today. Tasks can we written down and displayed in a centralised area, with personnel picking up jobs as and when. One example is T Cards – introduced more than 60 years ago – a traditional way of managing tasks and resources for a wide variety of applications.
The simplicity of the T Cards board system means it can be adapted very easily and will provide benefits almost immediately with virtually no training, according to T Cards Direct. The simple and visual nature is said to be ideal for when an update or information about a task needs to be shared.
One example supplied is the Maintenance Office Board, which helps to manage unscheduled and reactive maintenance tasks, with a simple five column boards and 200 maintenance T cards (www.is.gd/ajuleg). Another example is the Maintenance Planning System, which allows users to manage unscheduled and reactive maintenance tasks from origination through to ordering spares and sign off (www.is.gd/akunod).
GOING DIGITAL
Naturally, with the rise of technology and online systems, T Cards Online has been introduced, providing accessibility and connectivity benefits. The new web-based T Cards Online system is said to enable users to easily set rules for events and define outcomes. For example, it can automatically send e-mails to a defined address when a task or job is moved to a category. Likewise, an automated alarm if a T Card has been ‘inactive’ for a pre-set time period. The system enables all this information to be displayed either on large in-office screens or on mobile devices, such as mobiles and tablets, allowing staff access to information. In addition, the new ‘Quick’ reporting system is ideal for generating graphs and reports.
SolutionsPT is an industrial IT solutions provider. Solutions manager Andy Graham believes that traditional manual display boards, where information is written down manually for everyone to see, can be difficult to update, affected by the possibility of human error, or operationally inefficient in some cases.
“Conversely, a digital manual display board has significant benefits,” says Graham. “Take, as an example, the ANDON approach, where notification of a quality or process problem is made to management/maintenance and, traditionally, manual display boards would be used at the end of an automation line. Using digital display boards ensures the necessary information is captured from the programmable logic controllers (PLCs) so the right people can get what they need from the digital display board in real-time. This would typically be captured with a human-machine interface (HMI) at each line to improve efficiency.”
Graham continues: “Infrastructure costs should be low because the HMIs are generally implemented locally at each line where engineers need the information, not in a central control room. The HMI technology adoption should therefore be able to display information from the HMI in a web browser on the same network. The web browser can be opened on a large screen display, showing the information required.”
Many modern monitoring and control solutions now have this web-based capability, according to Graham. He gives the latest version of SolutionsPT’s InTouch software as an example, said to contain access to a single web browser that enables a “simple, seamless upgrade” that can provide huge benefits to customers. They can also then choose between multiple HMIs to ensure they implement the most appropriate digital display board for their needs.
COLLABORATION
Mark Bitto heads the Global Products Marketing Group within ABB’s Industrial Automation Process Control Platform team. He explains that historically, operations and maintenance functions were separated by different systems, agreeing that reporting between one another was manual, usually via paper or email. This is, however, “an inefficient and slow way” to get things done.
“Today, the sheer amount of information available is driving the integration of multiple systems into one environment, thereby making it easier for operations and maintenance to collaborate,” Bitto says.
“Process plants today generate more data in a single day than they did in a month, 10 years ago. Integration through standard communication protocols is now bridging what were once islands of control or operations. Data is now available to everyone as the distributed control system (DCS), the business system, the planning system or the CMMS all talk with one another and share the relevant information to the right person, through the same display.”
With ABB Ability System 800xA (pictured), personalised workplaces provide users with easy access to the right information in the right place, to speed up decision-making and corrective action. Users can create role-focused work environments with information arranged according to user workflow.
“There is an abundance of data on asset health, which is being received in real-time. With integration and seamless collaboration between operations and maintenance via System 800xA’s high-performance HMIs, manual data entry errors, duplication of work, and delayed actions can be eliminated,” Bitto says.
“Through a single log-in, operators can, for instance, identify and monitor degrading asset performance before failure occurs. When the time comes to repair or replace the failing asset, the operator can review active work orders and if needed, create and submit new work orders to the CMMS electronically from the HMI. The fault report is then available for the maintenance department as soon as the operator clicks ‘submit’, thus enhancing collaboration and allowing ample opportunity to tend to anomalies before they negatively affect operation.”
HIGH-PERFORMANCE GRAPHICS
High-performance graphics is an area in which ABB is carrying out many HMI upgrades from older generation consoles. “High-performance graphics include building hierarchical views that allow a process to be inspected through high-level surveillance: the ability to see the entire plant from one screen and identify areas with performance issues, all during one inspection,” says Bitto. “From here, it is easy for the operator to quickly drill down to a specific area of the process and see more granular detail and selected events. Operators can identify process events versus maintenance events and inform maintenance teams earlier of any event upon which they need to react. Purpose-built graphics like flow diagrams are introduced, so that if an alarm or an event triggers, a decision tree enables the user to quickly identify the condition and walk through the actions that the operator needs to take or that the operator and the maintenance teams need to take.”
He continues: “Information can be presented in the context of the user’s role. A plant manager, for example, can see high-level KPIs; a process operative may be interested in the overall conditions of the process; while a maintenance engineer may need to see priority maintenance events. Then there is cross-talk between the operator and maintenance crew and integration with the CMMS. Logging into the CMMS can also give access to the DCS, avoiding the need to log in and out of two different systems. It is now a seamless integration between two systems.”