Process safety futures
International safety standards, such as IEC 61511, require end-users to conduct analysis of hazards and risks. However, just becoming standards-compliant falls far short of proactive safety management.
“Up to now, safety professionals have focused primarily on personnel and occupational safety. More focus is needed on process safety,” says Eddie Habibi, CEO of PAS, a company focused on industrial process alarms and operator effectiveness. “In the future, human operators will gradually be designed out of directly managing critical abnormal situations. Safety instrumented systems (SIS) embedded in designs will account for human factors.”
Alarms must be able to direct the operators’ attention to the most important problems that need to be acted upon, using priorities to indicate the degrees of importance, plus the corresponding corrective actions that must be taken. Improved effectiveness comes not from training the operator to use increasingly complex systems, but from developing systems that adapt effectively to maximise throughput with a minimum of operator involvement.
What’s needed are full process monitoring programs with diagnostics to provide not only early warning of accidents, but predictive maintenance that effectively prevents accidents before they occur; operating controls that effectively ensure safety with use of automated systems to change cognitive demands on operators.
Current DCSs and PLC-based systems have received mostly incremental improvements since being built on 1970s technology. Decades-old deterministic architectures will likely give way to the non-hierarchical distributed networks of the industrial Internet – what the Germans term Industry 4.0. This is where the paradigm shift will occur. The next wave of safety system designs will be tied closely to these changes.
Mobile devices everywhere
The steep decline of tethered PCs in industrial environments is caused by a major shift in the landscape: the use of mobile devices. Today, every engineer and technician has a tablet and smartphone. Many companies allow BYOD (bring your own device) and others simply provide work-area tablets.
The use of mobile devices improves operating efficiency, boosts productivity, drastically reduces cost and increases throughput with existing people and resources. Key benefit: It allows applications to be easily distributed to the right person, at the right location, at the right time.
Software recently introduced by Automation Control Products (ACP, www.thinmanager.com) provides significant new mobile functionality. “Relevance software delivers itemised information content to selected individuals who have the right skill sets, are at a proximate location in the factory, and are available to perform the needed services,” says Matt Crandell, ACP’s president.
Mobile-device software has many wide-ranging applications in general factory and process environments. With safety systems, scheduling and priorities are handled by the system, not human supervisors who may be stressed by the real-time emergency. It’s a substantial shift in productivity and effectiveness.
Beyond the impact of mobile functionality in the factory, the impact on safety systems is enormous. This is not just another safety improvement; it represents a completely new paradigm in factory and process safety implementation. This is the future of process safety systems.
Drones for delivery
This recent news got my attention: Amazon CEO, Jeff Bezos, outlined plans for drone-delivery of packages weighing up to five pounds in 30 minutes. The Amazon drones will be called Amazon Prime Air – for Prime customers. Happily I’m prime.
Amazon’s ‘octocopter’ was announced on ‘60 Minutes’. Some say this was a Bezos publicity stunt, hyped and timed for the start of the online holiday shopping season. Beyond just showmanship, there’s reason to believe that Amazon is on to something. If nothing else, it’s a reminder that expanded use of commercial drones is inevitable.
Often, consumer technologies start by serving higher-end markets and trickle down to become widespread. But, Matternet, a small Silicon Valley startup has been developing drone delivery technology for several years and the company expects drone delivery to be used in the developing world, to deliver food, medicine and other necessities to places that are not easily accessible. Matternet expects to introduce drone delivery technology to the ‘people who need it most’ and then build from there.
It’s not clear that drones would be legal. They are potentially hazardous as most drones lack the automatic ability to sense and avoid other objects. Then there’s the privacy problem – imagine drones buzzing around with cameras, audio recorders and facial recognition technology.
Drones have the potential to be a great boon to law enforcement, emergency workers, weekend campers – the list is almost endless. Businesses are only just beginning to dream up commercial applications. If Amazon’s concept ever becomes reality, its effect on retail could be revolutionary.
In my opinion, even if it takes a decade or more, drones will eventually be fairly common, seamlessly navigating the skies. And Amazon will be dropping stuff off on my condo balcony. I think I’ll e-mail Jeff Bezos and request prime beta-test status.
Jim Pinto is a technology futurist, international speaker and automation industry commentator. You can e-mail him at [email protected].
Or review his prognostications and predictions on his website www.jimpinto.com
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