Arjen Tjallema
In complex technical systems and processes, there is a trend to reduce the number of human operators on the system. For instance in the process industry the number of people that have to monitor the process plant is gradually being decreased, to safe on manning costs and, more important, to minimize the probability of human error.
Operators
Decreasing the number of human operators on a system means that their tasks have to be taken over by automated systems. Monitoring of a process can for instance be done by an automated condition monitoring system, to replace an operator. In general, automated processes can operate autonomously as long as no failures or unexpected events occur. The intervention of a human operator is often still critical in emergency situations, as an automated system is generally not able to deal with unknown situations. The last step in reducing the number of operators on a system, i.e. the step from one operator to no operator, will therefore be a quantum-step for which a fundamental change of technology is required. The offshore industry can be divided in two parts: the mining part where the oil and gas is extracted and processed and the maritime part where a platform for the mining is provided. In the maritime part of the offshore industry the same manning-reduction trend can be seen as in other industries.
Dynamic Positioning
In Dynamic Positioning (DP) operations, it has been shown that the vast majority of incidents is related to operator faults. The operator’s workload in DP operations is far from optimal: in normal situations the operator is highly underloaded, while in case of a fault in the system the workload suddenly rises to highly overloaded. This project will aim at changing the role of the operator in the DP system, such that the workload will be more optimal and that less manning is required to run these operations. To realize this, this thesis will investigate the feasibility of condition-monitoring and operator-support functions on DP systems. These functions will be created, tested and validated. If they are found to be feasible, the operator’s role in the process can be changed, such that the probability of operator-related incidents should decrease and that more efficient use of manpower is possible.