Automation
Here is a quote attributed to the American author, Warren Bennis:
The factory of the future will have only two employees, a man and a dog. The man will be there to feed the dog. The dog will be there to keep the man from touching the equipment.
Automation delivers a wide range of benefits, which includes
- Reduction in labour
- Increased safety
- Greater productivity
- Consistent quality
- Increased reliability
- Integration with business processes
But automation can be complex and opaque and leave the human team floundering if the system fails.
Smart Automation
By Smart Automation we mean automation that is appropriate for the economic enterprise. It is not automation for automation sake but something that will improve the system.
Too often, exceedingly complex systems are implemented. Such systems are hard to understand and maintain and end up not being properly used.
We believe that Smart Automation possesses the following characteristics.
- Outcomes are intuitively obvious
- The logic is self evident or adequately described
- Minimises cross linking with sub systems
- Is fault tolerant
- Is predictably fail safe
- Permits quick manual intervention
- Provides self-daignostics
- Allows for inter-operability with expert systems
- Is low cost
It is highly advisable to carry out a Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) on the whole plant and identify whether the proposed automation strategy will help mitigate the affects of faults and to the contrary will it in itself become a single point of failure. In addition, a Hazard and Operability analysis needs to be conducted to determine whether the proposed automation strategy will adequately support the operabilty of the plant and assist with reduction of hazards.
A word of caution - avoid the urge to annunciate a large number of faults and abnormal situations. Too many alarm signals can be confusing, the noise generated by minor events can draw attention away from serious events. Artificial Intelligence in the form of Expert System can further empower the human operators.