Train or Pain?

Making Sure Your Operators Know Their Stuff

Fortunately, most situations we face in our personal and business lives are manageable with knowledge we have, or can pretend to have. By applying what we already know, we can extrapolate and develop appropriate responses to new situations. Sometimes, however, we either know it or we don't. Pilots, deep-sea divers, ballet dancers and dentists, among many others, get paid to apply knowledge that's tough to claim without some pertinent training.

A production operator touches a button that causes molten steel to pour into a mold. A process operator sends thousands of gallons of expensive fluid through a pasteurizer by touching his finger to a computer screen. In both cases, and in many similar situations, that touch of a finger can have tremendous financial impact. Anyone who counts the production dollar should hope there has been sufficient dedication to operator training.

Industrial training comes in many forms and forums. A supervisor showing a new operator the ropes, a co-worker explaining a process, an operator thumbing through a process manual... we've all seen these formats of learning, and we know we can't do without them. Often, however, such informal or self-motivated formats of training are either inadequate or inappropriate. The steel production operator, one would hope, had some systematic learning opportunities before the finger met the button.

As the technology of automation controls moves us closer and closer to virtually seamless relationships between operators and the machinery they control, training requirements increase. The best control systems are simple to operate, but only by understanding the range of options available can an operator get the most out of his system. That's where structured training comes in.

Mission Contorls has organized the College of Automation to provide structured automation controls training for engineers, supervisors, maintenance people, and especially, operators. Instructors are all working engineers, programmers and equipment specialists, so the training is up-to-date and exactly pertinent to the students' needs.

Class subjects range from very basic introductory courses for managers and others with oversight responsibilities, to in-depth training on automation software packages and programming. Emphasis is on training for the people whose fingers meet the buttons.

Craig Nelson, President of Mission Controls, says, "We have known for some time that if we spend time training the managers, supervisors and operators of a controls system we have installed, we get fewer calls to come in and troubleshoot problems, and we get more calls telling us the system is working as advertised." Nelson says, "It seems self-evident that any system would run better if everyone involved knew the capabilities and idiosyncracies of the system, and," he adds, "that's exactly what we see happening."

The College of Automation is organized to hold automation training courses both at its Orange County, California, headquarters complex and on-site at students' plants. There are advantages to both venues, Nelson says. He points out that often students are more dedicated to the subject at hand if they are away from their normal work environments and pressures, learning in a structured classroom situation. The training is always formatted to take into account the systems with which the students are working. Often, a class is completely filled by students from a particular plant, in which case the curriculum and training materials are the exact screens and systems used in the plant. In other cases, training is held in the plant itself, alternating between classroom sessions and practical exercises on the plant floor, using the actual HMIs.