Title: The changing role of Operators, Automation and the Control Room

摘要

The Process Industry has been evolving over the last 50 years, as automation has been improving and becoming more sophisticated, the role of the operator has been evolving from "hands on" turning valves and operating levers, to supervising automation systems and stepping in and managing controls during abnormal conditions when the automation system can't cope. During this period, the control room has also been evolving from a task-based panel with easy access controls to a black box with very sophisticated HMI in a room that was designed for pneumatic panels. As technology has been applied the roles of the operator have been evolving into three distinct roles, the outside field operator, the inside controls operator and a hybrid of the two who takes on the responsibility for equipment care and reliability. In batch plants this hybrid role does everything, however, we are starting to see even batch process evolve in a similar way to continuous process with dedicated inside and outside operators. In the future, these three roles are going to harmonize, because the automation system is going to become distributed again with independent control loops built into the control valve and the capability to control from the field again.