In the pages that follow, we'll look at each one of them, and provide some
suggestions for how you can improve your own rate of success.
Habit 1 - Know the Process Knowing the process is the first and most important habit for control engineers.
To be effective in the automation and control of a process, you must first have
a thorough understanding of the process.
To develop process knowledge takes time and effort. Start by studying
process flow diagrams and P&IDs.
Trace the primary product as it flows through the process, highlighting it on
drawing with a colored marker. Talk to operators.They work with the process
day in and day out. They understand a lot about how the process normally
behaves.They also know about the abnormal, unusual things that can happen
during equipment failures, shutdowns, start-ups, and shift changes.
The process doesn't always behave according to the text book.
Make sure you know what to expect in abnormal situations. With a little bit
of process knowledge, tools like Process Interaction Mapping can help you to
pinpoint the source of control upsets.
Habit 2 - Focus on the Most Important Things
It is so easy to lose focus in a plant environment. There are daily disasters,
fire-fighting,management meetings,projects,and a hundred other distractions.
The challenge,of course,is to stay focused on those activities that will deliver
the most value to the business. As Stephen Covey says, in First Things First,
"The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing".
In a process manufacturing environment, the "Main thing" is usually some
combination of these factors:
• Unit Cost • Production Rate • Quality • Energy Costs • Reliability • Environmental & Safety It will be very difficult to prove success if you cannot link your work to one
or more of these factors.
Habit 3 - Document the Baseline
If you don't know where you started, how will you know how far you have
come? I have seen people make this mistake many times over in my career.
Successful engineers always take time to understand the starting point.
The starting point should always be measured in business terms. You can
supplement with some technical measures, but you should always establish a
good baseline of business metrics, such as those mentioned above.
Discuss the baseline conditions with an operations manager or financial
person, to make sure that you understand what the numbers mean.
This also helps ensure that you are working on the right things.
Be sure to use the exact same methods to measure these metrics. If they
measure profit in dollars per truckload, then you should, too.
The technical measures are a good supplement, but only if they can be
linked to the business metrics. For example, if you are trying to improve
quality (reduce % rejects, for example), it may be a good idea to track a
technical metric such as variability.
You can make a strong case that reduced variability has a direct impact on
reducing the amount of reject material.
Habit 4 -
Improve Your Effectiveness with the Right Tools
I can admit that, as an engineer, I love to dig in to the details, and use my
engineering knowledge to sniff out the root cause of a problem. This is part
intuition, part experience, and partly that engineering mindset. If you love to
solve problems, it can be easy to overlook that there may be some much
simpler ways to get the job done. For example, people often ask how to find
control loops that are performing poorly. We could go through the exercise
of looking at each loop, analyzing it, and coming up with a list of the top 10
issues. Chances are that this would take a long time, because I would
definitely get side-tracked into solving some of these problems along the way.
To make this job go much faster, I use the control loop monitoring tools in
PlantTriage. Based on a few key metrics, PlantTriage will give me a top 10
list automatically. It already has all the data, because it monitors the
process 24 hours a day.
And sometimes, you have to get your ego out of the way. All control
engineers think they can tune loops quickly by hand. "Quickly", yes."Properly",
not very often. Use a software tool to get the answers quickly and
properly. These days, most companies have downsized their engineering
staffs considerably. You simply don't have the time to be inefficient at any
aspect of your job.
Habit 5 - Communicate Results & Network
This is probably the most important of these 7 habits. If you do great things,
and nobody knows what was done, you have lost. Networking is a critical
part of this. I'm not talking about computer networks, but people.
Make sure you have credibility with a wide array of people. Think outside
your normal workday routine. Set up lunch meetings with some of these
people. The Plant IT Manager Your Counterparts in Other Departments.
The Plant Financial Guru. Instrument Techs. Operations Managers.
Purchasing Agents.This will be a challenge at first. But you will find that
this helps you to develop stronger relationships in the plant.
These relationships will be helpful as you communicate your results.
When you get some good results, you will need to communicate them
clearly, concisely, and in business terms. Remember the base lining
discussion above? Go back to your baseline measurements, and show how
your work had an influence on the bottom line. When it comes to
communicating, keep it simple. Don't write a 200-page report. Nobody will
read it. Instead, send a short email with "Before and After" pictures, and just
a little bit of back-up material. The subject line of the email should be
something like: "$120,000 Savings on the De-Chlorinator". That email will be
opened, read, and forwarded to others.
How much value can you bring? It certainly depends on your role.
With some effort, a typical control engineer should be able to document
between 6 and 10 times their annual salary in savings.This may come from
any combination of the business results areas listed in the baseline section.
Habit 6 - Keep Learning
Never stop learning. One of the great mentors in my career was Virgil
Colavitti. Virgil had been working in the same plant for over 40 years.
He seemed to know the inner workings of every machine, instrument, valve,
transformer, and other device under the sun. In working with him,
I learned why. He had a natural curiosity, and he was never afraid to ask
questions. In a group of people, he would often say, "I wonder how that
works..." And sure enough, someone would explain it.
Today, you have a huge number of training resources available.
You can take training course in your plant,at a training center,or over the web.
You can quickly find books and articles that delve into every possible subject.
Be careful! Make sure you are working with a credible source of information.
Published authors and established companies are great source of information.
But some on-line sources have little editorial control, and their accuracy is
questionable at best. ExperTune, of course, has been widely recognized for
over 20 years as a source of deep knowledge in the field of process control.
ExperTune's training courses are practical, hands-on training, designed
to help you be extremely effective at managing control loops in your facility.
Habit 7 - Share Your Knowledge
Typically, 20% to 30% of all control loops are running in Manual.
That should be shocking. Why don't people step up and take notice?
One reason may be that they simply don't understand the significance.
Process control is not well-understood by "lay people". Twenty years after
paying for my college education, my parents still have only a vague
understanding of what it is that a process control engineer actually does.
Even within the plant environment, there is often a vague mystery
associated with process control. We use strange terminology, and talk about
abstract things like "dynamics", "dead time", and "derivative".
Many plant people are simply confused by the topic. Sharing your knowledge
with others can help to make you and them more effective.
For your own success, if people understand what you do, they will have a
better appreciation of the value you bring to the company. It's hard to
downsize someone that brings a lot of value! Because other people often
have limited process control knowledge, even sharing a little bit of your
knowledge may be tremendously useful. For a while in my career, we used
a lot "single point lesson plans". These were simple, one-page training aids.
So you could do a short 3-minute training session on topics like:
"What is Cascade Control?", "Why we use filters on our instruments",
"How to test the over-speed interlock","How to prevent valves from sticking".
Whenever I was called in to resolve a problem at night,I always followed up
with a single-point lesson the following day. I figured that I would not need
to be called in again on the same problem if 10 other people knew how to
resolve it.You can be as formal or as informal as you wish.
The key point is to help spread some knowledge around.
Conclusions
Your results will improve and be recognized if you pay attention to the 7
Habits discussed in this article. A typical control engineer should be able to
document between 6 and 10 times their annual salary in savings. Documented results are key to success. Make sure you have the right tools
and training to be successful in your company.
About PlantTriage
PlantTriage is a Plant-Wide Performance Supervision System that optimizes
your entire process control system, including instrumentation, controllers,
and control valves. Using advanced techniques, such as Active Model
Capture Technology, PlantTriage can identify, diagnose, and prioritize
improvements to your process.
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