Functionally Rich Shift Reports

Shift Reports The new generation of functionally-rich Shift Reports Shift reports are an essential cog in the modern process control organization. This document discusses how the demanding requirements of a shift report system can be met by adopting an intranet-based configurable logging system. What is the importance of a Shift (or Handover) Report The concept of a shift report is nothing new. In an earlier ISN, we looked at the need for shift reports and we presented our new electronic handover application which was designed to bring the shift handover back into control. In summary, an electronic shift report offers the following benefits: The primary benefit to going to a networked Shift Report system is that all the incoming shift workers start the shift well informed. They have a clear and concise understanding of the status of the process as they start their work. This means that expensive and major plant upsets will be avoided because of better decisions. Additionally, because the shift reports are visible to all, the quality of the handover steadily improves and the procedures are always carried out. There is also a clear record and audit trail of the shift report so that each operator knows his or her responsibility in the process. Once people are aware of their responsibilities, they take a pride in them and the quality of operations steadily improves. The system is useful to different people in different ways. For example, an incoming maintenance manager would be interested in the maintenance fields while a supervisor would want to look at why there are continuing shutdowns in a given process stream. The shift reports are maintained in an easily searchable database so that technical and managerial staff can easily find records of the reports to trace recurring problems . For example, an engineer could find out where a particular problem started to appear by looking back through the shift reports. The difference between an Electronic Logbook and an Electronic Shift Report Essentially, with an electronic logbook, each record represents a single moment in time. Over an 8 hour period, for example there may be 20 or 200 records added to the logbook. With a shift report however, each record represents the time span covering the whole shift. (In most cases 8 or 12 hours). For any given day, there are only 2 or 3 shift report records depending on how many shifts are active. This puts an entirely different set of requirements on the application. So if we could wave a magic wand, what would we like to see in a shift report? A Shift Report Shopping List Annotating: Since there can be multiple entries per shift, we need to be able to tell the difference between each entry. On the shift report, it is important to know who actually entered the information, when the information was entered and what background information occurred at the time of the entry. All these annotations are attached automatically to the entry as can be seen in the screen shot on the right. Templates: Often, the final step of an outgoing shift operator is to enter key process data values into a form. Till now, this has been a paper form that is then copied and sent via internal mail to the people who are managing the process. The obvious shortcomings of this paper process include the inability to find the information later, the slowness of the mailing process, the lack of any auditing facilities etc. With a electronic shift report however, a template can be brought up within the shift report itself and the operator simply enters the values of the required parameters. Immediately, this information is available to the incoming shift, the supervisory and management levels and also, later for anyone wanting historical information. An alternative for a template inside the shift report, is a document that is electronically "attached" to the shift report. This has the advantage in that it can be any format such as a Word or Excel document. It is the function of the shift report program to automatically attach a completed Word or Excel document at the end of the shift. Other items on our shopping list: Management: We need to manage when a shift report record is added and who may modify the record etc. It is important that there is only a single shift report per shift. Generally, it is a good idea that the adding of this shift report is done via an automatic process since an operator may not have time to do it or may inadvertantly add two reports. Other management features such as the attaching files to the shift report and, if necessary, printing the reports are also best carried out automatically. Aggregation: We need to gather together information from multiple log entries and collate these in the shift report. Often there is information that needs to be collected automatically from various sources to be added in to the shift report. For example, there may be a field in the shift report which lists the number of major process shutdowns. In this case, this kind of information can be retrieved from a separate logbook and written in (in summary form) into the Shift Report and once again.....automatically. Distribution of Information: At the end of a shift, we want to be able to print or email out the shift report to various people. At the end of the shift, there are various interested parties that would like to see the information in their emails. The system will email pdf files to a list of email addresses. Word, or Excel reports which are attached to the shift report may also be mailed to the interested parties. Incredible Flexibility: No two sites are the same......trust us on this one! We need to be able to restructure the functions of the shift report in a myriad of different ways. A single preferences file controls the scheduling of all the functions to be carried out. Information such as shift start and end times, initial values for the fields etc. are all in this preference file. So how can we possibly achieve all this functionality? The block diagram on the right shows how the St James Software Shift Report Software achieves this functionality. In a nutshell, 1. An Intranet-based application provides an intuitive interface to operators and supervisors in the plant, 2. A shift report background program takes care of the management of the shift reports in terms of adding the reports, attaching templates, aggregating and printing the logs. 3. The configuration of the whole process is controlled by a Preferences file which can be easily modified by you the end-user. How can we try out this Shift Report Application? If you are interested in seeing what this can do for you, we can provide you with a fully functional Shift Report application that is tailored to your system without you having to download and install the software. Simply fill in a questionnaire (which you can get from here) and email it to us. We will provide you with an application that you can try out by simply pointing your browser to your password protected Shift Report on the web. We do this with our hosting facility. View the on-line Demo Please send me more information Click here to view our Price List.