Emerson wants to make process technology much easier to use
27 Nov 2009
The Hague, The Netherlands - Emerson Process Management is seeking to make process control technology easier to use in line demands from customer who are struggling with skills shortages and declining capacity to absorb new technologies. The stated goal is to deliver “a significant improvement in ease-of-use and workforce productivity”.
The US major’s initiative is based around the introduction of the Human Centered Design Institute, which follows five years of customer work-practice analysis, new product development re-engineering and organisational training.
“Process control technologies have come a long way in the past 40 years,” said Peter Zornio, chief strategic officer at Emerson. “But the industry has invested almost exclusively on feature and technology enhancement, instead of designing around how people actually use the technology. We believe it’s time technology began serving people, instead of the other way around.”
Emerson’s human-centered-design (HCD) approach is reflected in its new DeltaV S-series digital automation system hardware, as well as its launch of more than 50 new field device dashboards.
“We observed that customer project engineering and design processes across the industry put too much emphasis on locking down designs very early in the project, often before the process design was complete,” said Zornio. “Not only does this increase FEED and detailed design cost and time, it also exposes the project to increased labour and potentially significant change order costs during construction. Additionally, the existing wiring processes were time consuming and laborious…and ripe for an innovative approach.”
The new DeltaV S-Series of hardware is designed to offer customers and engineering contractors enhanced flexibility in I/O engineering thanks to electronic marshalling. Hard-wiring each device as a unique connection from field to controller and every contact in between is eliminated so there is less engineering up front and fewer change orders later in the project.
Emerson also turned its attention to day-to-day operations, focusing on the repetitive tasks operators and maintenance staff perform and how they interface with field devices.
“We evaluated device interfaces across the industry and found a common problem,” said Zornio. “Routine steps which operators and maintenance personnel perform frequently were cumbersome, confusing and illogically laid out. It’s an endemic problem throughout the industry. Based on user input, we have overhauled Emerson’s Device Dashboard designs to improve speed and accuracy of confidently performing these tasks.”
The primary goal of Emerson’s Human Centered Design Institute is to ensure that user work practices and improved task completion (usability or workforce productivity) are at the heart of every new product that Emerson introduces.
“There is a demographic paradox facing the industry,” said Zornio. “In mature markets, knowledgeable workers are retiring. In emerging markets, finding knowledgeable and skilled workers is very difficult. By putting increased emphasis on ease-of-use, we can meet this demographic challenge head-on and simply make it easier to extract value from technology investments.”
Emerson has been developing its HCD process in collaboration with Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, which specialises in human interface and interaction with technology. This work has led to of the set up of a virtual Emerson Human Centered Design Institute encompassing design teams for all of its brands.
“Getting inside the heads of users, including how they interface with each other and the technologies, is the foundation of Human Centered Design,” said Duane Toavs, director of Emerson’s Human Centered Design Institute. “Based on interviews with more than 100 customers, we developed Personas and Stakeholder Maps which help us define the ecosystem of a plant. This includes how those users interact with technology, and how the design of those products affects their productivity. Simple in theory, but really challenging in practice.”
