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Choosing the right business partner is important when integrating existing technology and new equipment with controlsystems of different brands.
With our experience and knowledge we can assist and coordinate your acitivities if you want to implement controlrooms/centres of your own design. We can help you designing the systems needed in your controlroom/centre to get the needed functionality and usability and implement it using the best technolology to a cost effective solution.
For larger installations it is wise to contract one of the larger companies such as Honeywell or ABB, Barco or Eyevis
An interesting system is Proview Control system used and developed by SSAB (large Swedish steel manufacturer)
As this is an open source project you can see the interesting software development here.
The system is free to use, modify and redistribute.
We think it is important to point out that many times it is the bad designs that are the expensive ones. Knowledge, planning and preparation reduces the overall investment and also leads to reduced cost of operation and better functionality. You can sometimes see that control rooms that are quite high budget ones, have problems that could have been avoided, had the designers had more knowledge about ergonomics (and of course other subjects as well).
Recently I had the opportunity to take a closer look at two control rooms built by the same company and the first one was built maybe a year before the second one. The objective was to assess if the design can support the operators’ optimal performance and efficiency.
The design should also minimize the risks for operator-induced errors and support the operators’ efficient handling of process errors and disturbances.
Furthermore, the design should support a comfortable, pleasant and attractive milieu.
Both these control rooms were professionally built and with a realistic budget, but there were problems that could have been avoided. The second control room was built slightly differently taking into account the experiences and the feedback from the first one.
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The main issues was about the desktop workspace, light settings and choice of colors in the room and on the graphic presentations of the process causing reflexions in the computer monitors.
Other problems were related to the furniture, lack of adjustment possibilities. The ventilation system was well dimensioned but the airflow in the room was such that it would most likely cause muscle pain and other health problems for the operators. There were also some work-flow related problems that caused the operators to use laptop computers for some operations (like manual data entry) and there were no space reserved for this activity.
Please read the book:
Handbook of Control Room Design and Ergonomics, second edition, Ivergård and Hunt (2009).
It is a good book.
A brief presentation of the book is at http://www.controlcentres.com/node/46
From the presentation of the book:
First published two decades ago, the first edition of Handbook of Control Room Design and Ergonomics: A Perspective for the Future became a benchmark for the field.
New in the Second Edition:
• Extensive coverage of the use of the control room and its related computer system outside the work of monitoring and supervising the processes
• Discussion and explanation of how the control room can also be used for the purposes of education and simulation training
• Discussion of the use of the control system for optimizing and developing the existing systems and processes
• A section on new ideas and philosophies about organizational design and job design as these are applied to control room related work
• Proposed organizational designs of the future
• Theoretical background about learning, learning in the workplace, and lifelong learning
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