Getting control of Control Room Orders

Control Room Orders: Why go to an electronic version? Control Room Orders:  We take a closer look at the flow of instructions associated with a typical control room environment. Control Room Orders: What are we talking about? If one sits back and looks at the "normal" day to day operations in an industrial site, various patterns start to become abundantly clear: Firstly, things go very wrong, very often and usually at precisely the wrong moment. (This is called Murphy's first law.) When this happens, operators react with decisive speed and either make an adjustment on their consoles or more often than not, make a telephone call to a field operator to physically go out there and do something. This is what we call a Control Room Order or Instruction. There are typically streams of orders going out to many operators during the course of the shift. The range of orders can be from the trivial to the crucial. One thing is clear: This is a process that can go horribly wrong and in fact, the success or failure of the company will often largely depend on how well this stream of orders is managed and acted on. But what could possibly go wrong? : Well just about everything: Operators can misunderstand, can spend their time doing low priority tasks, can do jobs twice, can leave unpleasant ones to the next shift, can do the job on the wrong equipment etc.. Control Room attendants can: Get confused about whether a task has or has not been done, have trouble contacting the operators, think they have issued an order or forget to issue an order, think someone else has done the order etc. etc. We were not surprised when various customers of ours asked us to develop an application that would help them take control of this process. And so the St. James OrderBook application was born. Read on to see how it works. OrderBook: Bringing the process back into control. Here is how it works: Instead of trying to contact the field operators on the phone, control room attendants enter the orders into the computer in the control room. Field operators "collect" the orders from their field screens, and as each order is carried out, update the status on their screens so that the control room attendant (and any authorized user) can get a clear picture of the status of the work being done. Simple! So what would be the benefits of such a system? What do we gain from automating the Orders System? The primary benefit to going to a networked Orders Base System is that the site personnel get a clear indication of the precise status of orders that are currently active and so can better manage the entire communications between control room based and field operators. I.e. people know exactly what the operations staff are doing at any one time. Additionally, there is no chance that an order could be forgotten or (possibly worse) duplicated. There is also a clear record and audit trail of who created the order, who is responsible for the order and when the order must be completed by. People know what they are responsible for and are credited with the work they have carried out. Since the system is on-line, updates to the status of orders are made instantly available to everyone. Supervisors, Control Room Attendants, Maintenance Personnel do not have to phone the control room to find out the status of a task. This means that there is a much better coordination level between the different disciplines. High Priority, On Hold or Overdue orders can be highlighted so that the field operators can make the most effective use of their efforts. The orders are maintained in an easily searchable database so that the operating staff can easily find records of past orders to help improve their effectiveness. For example, the user could search for all orders that have been carried out in the last year on a particular piece of equipment. Alternatively, they may be looking to see how long it took to do a particular task when it was carried out the last time. If you are interested in examining the concept of a networked OrderBook further, have a look at the next section. It is an easy way to get started. St. James Software's OrderBook: An easy way to get started... First, a quick look at an Industrial Orders Base Application: St. James Software's OrderBook OrderBook is a corporate wide networked Order Management system designed for Industrial conditions. OrderBook is designed so that Control Room Operators (or Supervisors, Managers etc.) can issue orders directly into their computer screens. Field operators see only the relevant orders in priority based order and can update the status of the orders as they carry them out. OrderBook is also completely configurable so that it can be made to fit the special requirements of virtually any Industrial Site. To get started, try out either of our demos (an on-line web based version or a downloadable standalone version.) Databases: The demo will work with Access, SQL Server, Oracle or Postgres. License: Use the web based version as often as you like or download a fully functional demo (incorporating all the configuration functions) and valid for a period of 30 days from the download page. Demo Description: The demo is based on an Alumina Processing Site as shown in the diagram above. Of course, if you would like to change the demo, you can add your own logs or add fields to the tables and change the look and feel of the presentation. View the on-line Demo Please send me more information Click here to view our Price List.