Thoughts on High Performance HMI

I

Thread Starter

ih

Hello all, many great moments!

First, I have some modest HMI design experience (ABB and Siemens). A few months ago I've stumbled on a link to a book The High Performance HMI design by Bill Hollifield, Dana Oliver, Ian Nimmo, Eddie Habibi. As much as I could find about it I liked very much, but it's a substantial investment for me. Is it worth the money? Is there any of authors on this forum?

Second, I'm a beginner in HMI design, and the design ideas presented in this book seem like not possible to easily implement in previously mentioned vendor's HMI development tools. For example 1: a vertical bar that colours last 15 minutes of variable change in different colour. Example 2: a dashed lines for upper and lower limits of a variable anticipated during start-up in a trend preview. You can't use this features in HMI development tools, without writing custom made code (like AcitveX). My co-worker told me that kind of code can't be used in real life because it's not vendor tested and approved or certified for working 24/7 without problems.

So my question is: how to implement ideas presented in the mentioned book without meddling in the framework code layer between HMI design tool and operating system?

Third, here's a joke I read a few days ago in some Automation guide :) :

Optimist will tell you the glass is
half-full; the pessimist, half-empty;
and the engineer will tell you the
glass is twice the size it needs to be.
- anonymous

Many greetings!
Ivan Harhaj
 
A

Arlen Jacobs

The effort is worth it, if you have the right goals defined at the start.
Easier training of new operators?
Wasted time, or mistakes, entering values?
Too many alarms, response time poor?

Talk with the operators, supervisors, and managers. Define the KPIs for each group.
If the operators love their current HMI, and they hit all their KPIs, then it doesn't leave you much room for improvement.

You also need to measure what is at stake. The book you reference comes from the oil/gas industry and chemical process. Operator mistakes cost a lot in equipment, facility, quality, and personal safety.

Some other resources are ASM Effective Console Operator HMI Design and the ISA 101 HMI guidelines (not yet released, but soon ? to be).
The ASM book is more detailed, but they explain why each recommendation is useful. They also provide different levels of recommendations, based on important down to nice to have.

Make sure you define your goals up front, what are you trying to solve. Choose the HMI guidelines that help you fix those goals/issues.
 
I've just finished reading the High Performance HMI Handbook and would like to post a short review. The ideas presented in the book were totally worth the money. Although the first 1/3 of the book is practically answering the question: "why High Performance HMI?" which could have been only one chapter in my humble opinion. Somewhere around chapter seven a real deal kicks in, explaining in detail how to design a good HMI including control room design, alarm management, situational awareness and much more. After that the authors present methodology of how to implement and revise this HMI system.

This book is a must read for all HMI and control room designers. I can imagine how poor HMI design, having the budget of about under 0,001% of total plant investment, and many times being rushed and designed without operators' feedback, based on designer's presumptions about what/when/where process data needs to be presented to operator by HMI, can be a significant cause of plant accidents and incidents. So make High Performance HMI principles an ISO standard as soon as possible and make HMI designers and HMI vendors aware of it's existence. I hope the theory of good HMI practices will continue to grow and improve. Many congrats to authors.
 
B

Bob Peterson

The book has been sitting on my desk unread for the better part of a year now. Just have not gotten to it.
 
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