Turbine Control & Interaction Software - General Electric (GE)

General Electric Company operates through several divisions like aviation, power, health care, transportation and oil & gas. I have worked for GE Power & Water designing most efficient gas & steam human-machine interface (HMI) turbine screens where the operators can monitor, control and visualize the operations of the plant.

Humans impacted 🏆: 10,000+

MY ROLE

Human-Machine interface screen design,
user experience, screen enhancement,
testing, mentored junior design engineers,
quality control


DEFINING THE DESIGN PROBLEM

The Traditional (old) HMI screen philosophy of GE was re-designed to help the plant operator’s go with the flow, to easily understand the information and take corrective actions, and navigate smoothly. User Study Research was conducted by the GE Global Research across Europe, North America, and Asia on Combined- Cycle power plants applying user-centered approach by understanding plant operators and their work flow.

We defined the problems under 5 headings:

  • Color Palette
  • Graphical Representation
  • Navigation
  • Screen Hierarchy
  • Alarm Management

SOLUTION


COLOR PALETTE

The traditional HMI screens have color codes of Red to completely stop, Green to specify its running, and yellow to give caution. This codes effects the behavior and perception of the operator hence this are changed into Blue when its running and gray to when the dynamic object is still. The new color philosophy increases the HMI visualization experience to optimize operator’s performance.




GRAPHICAL REPRESENTATION

To enhance the operator's experience and understanding of the data, we displayed the values/data of the flow/pressure/temperature in graphs/charts. By doing this we assured that the plant operator takes corrective action with the value/data displayed. For example graphically indicating the alarm's operating ranges like H, HH, L, LL to easily understand the required value.

NAVIGATION

For an operator to quickly recognize the issue and navigate to the required screen location with ease and speed is important. For example, responding to an alarm condition and returning the plant back to a stable condition from an upset condition needs minimal steps to understand the issue and take steps to re-solve it. To cope this up we have improved the navigation design by incorporating incorporating the popup and status windows with a buzz sound, this gives the quick information of the valve/motor condition. We also designed a Navigation bar having all the screen names to the left side which helps to switch to other screens when using single monitor.

"Can I get anywhere in 3 steps or less ?"

SCREEN HIERARCHY

Currently, the HMI set consists of 50-150 HMI screens under one GT or ST unit which makes the operator job tough to quickly check which system failed or which valve/motor stopped working. To overcome this we have reduced the screen number to 20-30 by removing the duplicated information and merging the screens with similar operation task. We organized the screen level under the plant topology:

  • Level 1: Plant Overview
  • Level 2: Units (GT, ST, HRSG, BOP, Generator, Electrical)
  • Level 3: Systems of the respective units
  • Level 4: Sub-System of the respective units
ALARM MANAGEMENT

Ineffective management of alarm causes several accidents in the plant resulting explosion. So to ensure safe operation of the plant we have to maintain alarms efficiently. To do this we made some guidelines where prioritizing the alarm – Alarm Rationalization, using visual effects to differentiate the status of the alarm and not using same colors for prioritizing alarms that were used in the design components ,,.

DESIGN

The interface between the human operator and a machine significantly effects the efficiency and ease to operate. I have re-designed the traditional HMI screens of GE to provide safe, cost-effective and high reliable performance application. The key solution for the efficient HMI design is to understand the plant operator.

  • Will the operator be able to figure out the functions that are being operated on the touch screen?
  • Will the system feedback make it clear to the operator to make a right choice?
  • Will the operator be able to realize the correct control option?

We have cut shot 30-100 traditional HMI screens into 20-30 UX screens by organizing the layout that can be feasibly operated by carefully analyzing the hierarchy level of the navigation. We made sure the results of the feedback from the control button, toggling switches and the bar graphs are easily visualized to make a actions when required.

BEFORE
AFTER
Fans
Motors
Pumps
Valves
Plant steam turbine overview screen
Plant overview screen
Tablet view of overview screen with alarm notifications
Faceplates (pop-up) screens

USER VALIDATION/TESTING

Qualitative study was conducted to measure the progress of the design. After the Qualitative validation study we have come up with three hypotheses:

  • Hypothesis-1 : We don't completely require all the data that is available on the main process screens.
  • Hypothesis-2 : Incorporating good visuals will increase the operator-screen interaction time.
  • Hypothesis-3 : The experience level and willingness to accept the new design are indirectly proportional.

For Hypothesis-3, we got a counter example that the older generation or a person with more experience feels that the new design to be more interactive than the traditional screens and the young generation or the person with less experience are not ready to accept the change in the design as they have less knowledge on the look/feel of the panel screen.

System Usability Scale for the traditional and new HMI design screens.

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