Process Plant Display Refactoring for Mobile Screen Navigation
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Solution Overview
Problem
Existing systems face difficulties in rendering full-size process plant displays on small screen devices like mobile phones and tablets, leading to reduced operator effectiveness and situational awareness, especially in emergency situations, due to limited processing and memory capacities, and the inability to efficiently navigate large process displays.
Innovation Solution
The implementation of graphical determination, detection, and rendering techniques that regionize and refactor full-size process plant displays for mobile user interface devices, allowing operators to view large displays on small surfaces without the need for new code or graphics development, using a regionizer application and display auto-introspection routine to determine and render display regions and graphical process control loop portions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If full-size process plant displays are rendered on mobile user interface devices, then operators can access process information remotely, but the limited screen area and processing capacity prevent effective visualization and navigation
Solution Approach 1:
The full-size process plant display is divided into multiple display regions that can be independently rendered on the mobile device screen. Each region represents a portion of the overall process display, allowing operators to navigate through different segments to access complete information while maintaining effective visualization of each individual region on the limited mobile screen area.
2Adaptability or versatility
If full-size process plant displays are rendered on mobile user interface devices, then operators can access process information remotely, but the limited processing and memory capacities reduce operator effectiveness
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts and transmits only the necessary display region data to the mobile device rather than transmitting the entire full-size display. This extraction approach reduces the processing and memory requirements on the mobile device while maintaining operator effectiveness by providing access to the specific process information needed for remote monitoring and control.
Solution Approach 2:
The display regions are dynamically determined and adjusted based on the mobile device's processing capabilities, screen characteristics, and the operator's interaction patterns. This dynamic adaptation allows the system to optimize performance and maintain operator effectiveness across different mobile devices with varying processing and memory capacities.
3Adaptability or versatility
If full-size process plant displays are rendered on mobile user interface devices, then operators can access process information remotely, but navigation becomes difficult and situational awareness is reduced
Solution Approach 1:
The system adds a navigation dimension by providing multiple display regions that can be accessed through systematic navigation patterns. Instead of attempting to display the entire full-size display at once, operators navigate through organized regions, which transforms the navigation task from overwhelming to manageable while maintaining situational awareness through structured access to process information.
4Productivity
If display regions are determined and rendered on mobile devices, then resource usage efficiency is enhanced, but the complexity of implementing regionization and refactoring increases
Solution Approach 1:
The display regions are determined and configured in advance through automated analysis of the full-size process plant display structure. This preliminary action identifies optimal region boundaries and content assignments before deployment to mobile devices, reducing the complexity of implementation by establishing a systematic framework that can be automatically applied across multiple devices while maintaining high resource usage efficiency.
Data Source
AI summary
Graphical user interface (GUI) based systems and methods are disclosed for regionizing full-size process plant displays for rendering on mobile user interface devices. A regionizer application receives a full-size process plant display that graphically represents at least a portion of a process plant that includes graphic representations of a plurality of process plant entities. The regionizer app determines display region(s) of the full-size process plant display that define corresponding view portions of the full-size process plant display. The display regions are transmitted to a mobile user interface device for rendering by a mobile display navigation app. The GUI based systems and methods can also automatically detect graphical process control loop display portions within full-size process plant displays for rendering on mobile user interface devices. The GUI based systems and methods can further refactor full-size process plant displays at various zoom and detail levels for visualization on mobile user interface devices.