Operator Support System for Multi Product Processes - Application to Polyethylene Production

Process manufacturing is increasingly being driven by market forces and customer needs and perceptions, resulting in necessity of flexible multi-product manufacturing. The increasing automation and tighter quality constraints related to these processes make the operator's job more and more difficult. This makes decision support systems for the operator more important than ever before. Based on the three-level model of skilled operators, this paper proposes a modular Operator Support System (OSS). As the proposed approach extensively uses process data, the OSS is based on a data warehouse designed with the help of enterprise and process modeling tools. For human-computer interaction, front-end tools have been worked out where advanced multivariate statistical models are applied to extract the most informative features. The concept is illustrated by an industrial case study, where the OSS is designed for the monitoring and control of a high-density polyethylene plant.