Collaboration and Interaction Functions of Future Process Control Systems Toni Koskinen*, Hannu Paunonen**, Marko Nieminen*, Jaakko Oksanen** & Mikko Kovalainen*** * Software

Business and Engineering Institute, Helsinki University of Technology, P.O.Box 9210, FIN-02015 HUT, FINLAND tel +358 9 451 6040, +358 9 451 3973, fax +358 9 451 4958, [[email protected]] ** Metso Automation Inc., P.O.Box 237, FIN-33101, FINLAND tel +358 20 483 8528, +358 20483 8911, fax +358 20483 8592, [[email protected]] *** Agora

Center, University of Jyväskylä, P.O.Box 35, FIN-40014, FINLAND tel +66 2 524 5739, [email protected]

KEYWORDS

collaboration, interaction, process control system

ABSTRACT Process industries are increasingly networking with their suppliers, industrial partners, and customers. Intensive interaction between the different stakeholders requires new types of coordination, co-operation, and collaboration. Networked business activities between geographically distributed organizations benefit from the utilization of ICT-mediated communication and collaboration (information and communication technology). To this development contribute also the process control systems that are evolving towards platforms that support network-based collaboration and cooperation. The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize the support for collaboration and interaction provided by the future process control systems. We aim to identify the possibilities to utilize modern collaboration technologies in process control environment and in future process control systems.

1 INTRODUCTION Today, process control work is performed in quiet and office-like control rooms. Information from the process is transferred to the operators by the control system through its user interface. Due to the advances in information technology and increasing level of automation, the operation has changed from controlling the process to supervising it. Detaching the operator from the process has enhanced the present development of organizations where operation, maintenance and development tasks are merging together. In addition to this, modern communication networks and the increasing utilization of information technology in production sites have made it possible to utilize the expertise provided by the distant expert organizations. Nowadays, expert centers of automation suppliers can provide remote, co-operative support for process monitoring, process optimization, problem solving, maintenance, training, and process planning. As a result of these developments, the branch of industry is becoming increasingly networked. It can be seen that virtual communities of process control professionals are emerging. The development of process control systems reflects the special requirements set by the work done in production organizations. The demands for usability have always been very high and based on that, special functions for monitoring the process have been included in the user interfaces as standard in all fields of the process industry. There has been a lot of research undertaken around decision-making in process control. In addition to this, especially during the past decade, process control systems have been affected by a general evolution of usability research, organization theory and the development of information systems and user interface technologies. These parallel areas of research have produced many separate developments and at the same time created an overall development scenario for process control. Tools for exchanging expertise and knowledge, for instance, have become integrated functions in the control systems. Today, an expert in a remote location, facilitated with real-time information from the target plant, can

cooperate and participate with his knowledge, skills, and experience in the decision–making process. However, the path towards process control systems that truly support versatile distant collaboration and interaction is just in its early stages. This evolvement is taking further steps when new network-enabled forms of collaboration are appearing to the plant floors.

2 RESEARCH FOCUS AND RESEARCH GOALS The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize the support for collaboration and interaction provided by the future process control systems. The role of process control system as a medium for collaboration and interaction becomes more important, because organizations are increasingly networking with their suppliers, industrial partners, and customers. In order to get the holistic view of collaboration networks, we will shortly describe the current settings for cooperation. Expert services provided by remote expert centers are one practical example of a collaboration network in process control. Expert centers and local production sites are collaborating in order to improve the efficiency and quality of production. The basis for cooperation is agreed on contracts that outline the business objectives of the collaboration. In these contracts the participants agree on production levels and target values that determine the objectives and the expected rewards for each participant if the target values are achieved. Based on the business arrangements the participants agree on the collaborative work practices and appropriate level of supporting technology. Since the process control environment is extremely complex and production sites are unique in terms of facilities, work practices, equipment, and so on, the support for collaboration and interaction needs to be flexible taking into account the individual features of production sites. As this networked business arrangement is relatively new, the concepts, practices, and supporting technology for collaboration is constantly evolving. In this paper we will particularly focus on the enabling technologies for collaboration. The process control systems are often used as internal communication media within the production organization. In the new settings these systems are likely to develop towards communication platform that is able to support trans-organizational collaboration as well. In this paper we aim at describing some of the emerging collaboration functions of the future process control systems. The results and ideas presented in this paper have been gathered and researched in a Tekes-funded research project called TechMedia (Technology Mediated Knowledge Services for Distributed Work Environments).

3 BACKGROUND 3.1 Recent Trends in Process Industry Globalization is playing an increasing role in industrial organizations. In order to act on global markets industrial organizations are increasingly networking with their suppliers, industrial partners, as well as with their customers. In process industries modern information technology plays crucial role in keeping up the continuous production. Production sites are increasingly paying attention to the production costs, quality, efficiency, and logistics. A recent trend is also the selection of business functions and activities that form the core functions of the company. This phenomenon has enabled the situation in which a single production site is run by several separate organisations and organisational units. This also means that the production sites are outsourcing the work that is not considered critical regarding to their core businesses. Due to the advancements in ICT some of these outsourced services can be bought from service providers that can be geographically located on other continents /4/. Due to these changes production work is more often carried out in cooperation with colleagues from other organisations that may even reside in a distant location. Some tasks may even be carried out concurrently in these distributed settings, although currently many of them are asynchronous in nature. In these settings the importance of ICT as a medium for interaction emphasizes. Networking also means that the expertise required for specific process situations can be more easily reached from the members of collaboration network. Local production site expertise can be complemented with expertise from the other stakeholders of the network. From the technological perspective process automation and supporting systems have evolved significantly during the last years. Equipment and software for the optimization of production are getting more intelligent. In normal circumstances they are capable of taking care of many detailed control and steering actions that traditionally have been on the operators’ responsibilities. More often, operators have the option to supervise and affect the process in the general level.

3.2 Collaboration Technologies Collaboration technologies is a wide concept that has its origins in several areas of research and application. In work context the topic has been particularly studied in the areas of performance support, information support, and computer supported cooperative work (CSCW). However, collaboration can be viewed from more informal perspective as well. In recent years the appearance of networking-enabled instant messaging tools and electronic bulletin board systems has brought the world-wide collaboration and interaction possibilities within the reach of every computer user. The main usage of these applications has during the last decade been mainly outside work contexts, in the consumer and leisure-time usage of computers. Are these applications useful for non-work context only? Or, would it be possible to apply them in work surroundings? Could we utilize the background ideas from them even in process control environments, where long distances and shift work are hindrances for communication and where the exchange of thoughts between distant experts could create new opportunities? In this section we will present shortly some of the collaboration technologies that are likely to emerge in process control environment as well. Electronic discussion forums (EDFs). One may see that a simple form of electronic interaction forum is the electronic diary that is currently rather widely used in Finnish process control environments. Electronic diaries are, however, usually used just for event and incident documentation purposes between work shifts (and officials), not so much for lively discussion. Obviously, the structure of a diary as such does not denote discussion in itself. Electronic discussion forums (EDFs) emphasize interactivity between individuals and groups also in the process control environment. In addition to just recording the incidents (as with diaries), persons are able to reach asynchronously other people who may be able to help them in problematic situations. The form and structure of the EDF aims at encouraging people to elaborate their questions and ideas in interaction with other participants of the forum. The discussions get documented in discussion threads and people are able to access them later if necessary. In EDFs interpersonal contacts enabled by the system results in knowledge sharing and transfer /2/. EDFs have many similar characteristics to instant messaging (IM, see later in this section). They are, however, more asynchronous by their nature compared to IM-mediated discussion. Also, the discussions are usually more visible and more systematically documented when compared to IM.

Figure 1. An example picture of a COMET-prototype that has been piloted in distributed process control environment. COMET is an electronic discussion forum with presence indicators (the green text under the picture). Instant messaging (IM). In recent years the use of IM has migrated from leisure-time online socializing to business settings. IM started as a simple synchronous tool providing instant text-chat capability between persons in separate locations but connected with the computer and the network. Nowadays IM has gotten bundled with loads of new functions that previously have been separate applications (e.g. online status information, file

sharing, audio and video conferencing) and it can even act as a medium for increasing awareness between different locations. Isaacs (2003) presented results of an extensive IM study carried out in workplace settings. She identified following findings that encourages organizations to introduce IM in work settings /3/: • Comparison to unanswered phone calls (62 percent) and failed attempts to start impromptu desktop video conferences (75 percent) with IM it is more likely to reach people (23.6 percent failures). This is due to the fact that in IM persons are not required to response to the contact requests immediately. • Concerns that IM might distract people from their work seem to be unnecessary. 62 percent of IM conversations focused entirely on work-related matters. • IM enables people to multitask between IM and other desktop activities. In 85 percent of the conversations, at least one user multitasked during the IM interaction. Besides real-time communication, presence is a unique and compelling feature of IM systems of today. It currently indicates whether a person is reachable at the moment. However, the possibilities of IM are just emerging. With its new features it can provide richer awareness information of current and future reachability, work context, and availability of persons /9/. Videoconferencing. Videoconferencing utilizes video streaming over internet and enables people to utilize several modalities simultaneously. Instant text-chat has the disadvantage of taking more time than audio-based communication – and the requirement for somewhat extensive typing. Audio-based communication (e.g. VoIP) is also more natural to most persons. The drawback of audio-based communication is that it lacks the ability to use gestures and expressions and point out visible objects. Screen sharing (viewing others’ display) is one step towards sharing context and making the shared surroundings richer but it is still limited to objects on the computer screen. Videoconferencing allows persons to point out real objects and present issues with gestures, but the lack of actual contact still weakens the collaboration. So far, from the technological perspective videoconferencing has been difficult to arrange in heterogeneous network environments. Due to the recent advancements in technology and applications this threshold is diminishing. Therefore, videoconferencing can serve as an efficient tool for collaboration and interaction. However, videoconferencing has its limitations as well; Bricker, Baker, Fujioka, & Tanimoto (1998) have presented that the computer-mediated communication should not be used as complete replacement for co-present collaboration /1/. A significant advantage of face-toface communication is that they enable persons to build trust and an understanding of individual communication styles /8/. The boundaries between different collaboration technologies are diminishing as new applications emerge. For instance modern IM clients include many features previously seen on videoconferencing tools. For users it does not make a difference which collaboration technology they are using as long as the technology is applied in purposeful context.

3.3 Collaborative Features of Modern Process Control Systems Traditionally process control systems are regarded as tools to perform automatic functions to show information from the process and to mediate operator’s actions to the process. However, the modern control systems gradually have incorporated functions referring to communication and collaboration inside the organization, as well. The user interfaces of digital process control systems in 70´s were based on the models of the old hard wired systems with indicators on wall panels. Later the flexibility and intelligence of the digital systems were utilized and more task specific operator displays and functions were designed. As a standard feature in 90´s the systems included supporting knowledge for process operation. Additionally, diaries for communication inside the organization and for storing the experiences became as integral parts of the systems. In that way the systems gradually ”grew” into the organization. /5,6/. Those tools drastically changed the work of production organizations. Networking itself is a strong function to facilitate communication and exchange of information. A possibility to view displays from another control room gives information about what the other crew is doing and increases situation awareness. In meetings and in remote expert centers all process information is available – in real-time, if required – for decisions about future actions. These decisions and plans can be further distributed through the network to the parties involved.

Because textual communication and collaboration have not belonged to the core work of operators it has been crucial to design the tools so that the threshold to start using them is as low as possible. For example diaries comprise functions like automatic entries which capture information related to the situation and include it to the entry without operator’s actions. Only a minimum effort from the operator should be required and the tools must be merged to the rest of the system so that their use becomes an integral part of the process control work. /7/

4 SCENARIO: COLLABORATION CONTROL SYSTEMS

FUNCTIONS

OF

FUTURE

PROCESS

Based on the previous paragraphs it is possible to draw some conclusions about how the collaboration functions of process control systems are evolving. As mentioned earlier, the future process control systems are not just linking local production site personnel together. As the expertise required to keep production site up and running is distributed to several locations, the need to provide collaboration and interaction channels between these sites increases. In the near future, the process control systems may well be called trans-organizational or distributed process control systems, since some of their functions are utilized and activated from several different locations. From the functional perspective we may see following functions to emerge in process control systems: Increased support for trans-organizational interaction and awareness. Awareness is crucial success factor for distributed collaboration and interaction between distant stakeholders. Process control system itself is a mediator of process related measurements, which are important factors for increasing awareness of situations at hand. In general, awareness has several characteristics. The measured awareness comes from the measures and process parameters. Awareness provides, however, additional information even about the social situation of members (e.g. who is participating on discussions), about the activities of individuals (what are other collaborators doing), and about the goals and constraints of other people and surrounding organization (e.g. production level plans). Basically all discussions between different stakeholders accumulate the awareness of individuals. From technological perspective the support for awareness is a combination of several functions. Awareness can be based on automatic cues provided by the system or easy-to-access collaboration channels for discussions, for instance. With effective utilization of automatic cues one can provide the users with quite extensive amount of contextual information. For instance utilization of basic features of IM can improve the awareness between different locations. These features can indicate which persons are available for discussions and what kind of active discussions are currently taking place. Through combining information about process alarms, process values, active desktop applications, and persons’ availability the process control system could mediate quite accurate awareness information about the overall situation of production for human decision support. Support for targeted on-demand interaction. It is obvious that without arranging versatile communication channels between different stakeholders of production the collaboration is more or less occasional and ineffective. By on-demand interaction we mean that the process control systems should be able to provide easy access to instant connection between appropriate people. Nowadays process control systems do not just gather process values together, they also increasingly provide links to expertise, which in this case could be stored information or links to persons with certain areas of expertise. The means and forms of interaction may vary depending on the situations at hand. For instance text-chat capability could be useful when the persons are not discussing in real-time and/or persons are working in mobile settings. Textual discussions also leave detailed trace about the content of discussions as well as the about the persons who participated in the discussions, which can be reused in case needed. In some situation videoconferencing capabilities are necessary. For instance, in problem solving situations it could be useful to provide live desktop feed via screen sharing from the process control system. When all participants are able to see the desktop view of the situation their contribution towards problem solving is likely to enhance. In many cases the interaction situations require contributions from several persons. Therefore communication channels should support multi-user discussions as well. However, different ways to interact need further situation-specific research: a certain way of collaborating with the support of a specific interaction technology may suit one situation – and be totally inappropriate in another. Support for content management of discussions. The role of content management of discussions gains importance, when the ICT-mediated collaboration between different persons becomes regular. Therefore process control systems should provide means to store and retrieve content of collaboration and interaction without sacrificing the actual collaboration event with e.g. predetermined information classification. There are many ways to efficiently utilize collaboration content. It can be used for problem solving purposes, educational purposes, production improvement purposes, and so on. In some cases if the discussions have been carried out via audio conferencing the content of discussions may get poorly documented. However, if the time and participants of

these discussions are automatically documented, this information combined with process events can provide important cues to persons about who to contact for further information. Although we have presented in this paragraph some possible functions of future process control systems, we realize that successful utilization of these functions always requires paying attention to business and organizational arrangements as well. Collaboration tools will certainly change the way of working – and vice versa.

5 CONCLUSIONS As earlier mentioned the purpose of this paper is to conceptualize the support for collaboration and interaction provided by the future process control systems. As can be concluded from this paper, the nature of process control systems is shifting more and more towards collaboration environments in which the different stakeholders, including more or less loosely connected external participants of the network, interact with the technical and social system. Some extent of this interaction is pre-determined (reporting, virtual meetings, etc.), but as the collaboration evolves towards dealing with more complicated and real-time issues the non-formal ways of interaction with and through process control systems become more important. The collaboration and interaction features of future process control systems are not an easy task to define. Process control is very complex and dynamically changing business environment, meaning that it is virtually impossible to pre-define the collaborative functions of systems. Rather, one should focus on making the collaborative features flexible, so that users could decide the practical arrangements of collaboration. Enabling possibilities for emerging collaboration technologies, different arrangements in the division of work in systems, securing the participation of ad-hoc-stakeholders in the process, as well as the integration of dynamically changing service providers, is truly a challenging task for researchers and practitioners, who are designing the future process control systems.

6 REFERENCES /1/ Bricker, L., Baker, M., Fujioka, E., & Tanimoto, S. 1998. Colt: A System for Developing Software that Supports Synchronous Collaborative Activities. University of Washington Technical Report UW-CSE-98-09-03. September 1998. /2/ Cross, R. 1999. “More than an Answer: How Seeking Information Through People Facilitates Knowledge Creation and Use,” Working Paper School of Management, Boston University, 1999. /3/ Isaacs, E. 2003. A Closer Look at Our Common Wisdom. Published in Tang, J. & Begole, J. 2003. Beyond Instant Messaging. Queue Volume 1 , Issue 8 (November 2003), pp. 28-37, ACM Press New York, NY, USA, ISSN:1542-7730 /4/ Koskinen, T., Korpilahti, H., Paunonen, H., Oksanen, J., Kovalainen, M. 2004. Contextual Inquiry into Online Remote Expert Services in Process Control. In: Proceedings of the IFAC/IFIP/IFORS/IEA Symposium; Analysis, Design and Evaluation of Human-Machine Systems. September 7-9, 2004, Atlanta, USA. /5/ Kovalainen, M. 2002. Computer Mediated Organizational Memory in Process Control - Moving CSCW Research from an Idea to a Product. Jyväskylä Studies in Computing, Jyväskylä 2002, ISSN: 1456-5390, ISBN: 951-39-1205-1. /6/ Paunonen, H. 1997. Roles of informating process control systems. Tampere University of Technology, Publication 225, Tampere. /7/ Paunonen H. & Oksanen J. 1999. Prosessinohjausjärjestelmän tietämystuen käytettävyyskriteerit, Automatiopäivät, 14-16.9.1999, Helsinki, Finland, pp. 100-105. /8/ Ross-Flannigan, N. 1998. "The Virtues (and Vices) of Virtual Colleagues," in Technology Review, Cambridge, MA: MIT, March/April, 1998. /9/ Tang, J. & Begole, J. 2003. Beyond Instant Messaging. Queue Volume 1 , Issue 8 (November 2003), pp. 2837, ACM Press New York, NY, USA, ISSN:1542-7730