Developing design for safety of automated systems in pulp and paper industries

摘要

Production automation has enabled manufacturing companies to increase their productivity and replace the human operator in tasks that are sometimes hazardous. In the pulp and paper industry in the province of Quebec, Canada, the integration of programmable technologies began in the 1960's. Since then, there has been a continuous evolution in the use of these technologies in all facets of paper production. However, production automation has not proved to be a miracle solution to the occupational safety problems associated with the equipment used in paper mills. The production systems in these companies are constantly evolving and the control systems related to them are being regularly designed, renovated and modified, which has a major impact on worker safety. As a result, automation is responsible for numerous serious accidents in these plants. This observation has prompted the Quebec pulp and paper industry to question the safety of automated systems, due to their complexity. What seemed at the start to be only a problem related to equipment lockout procedures, rapidly emerged as the symptom of a much deeper problem. The researchers in fact noted that the design of the automated systems was often deficient from the standpoint of safety.