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2010/07/14

Traditionally, we think of permits to work as a tool to protect employees, contractors and the assets that they are maintaining. Permits characteristically list possible hazards in the workplace and spell out how these are to be mitigated through isolation of energy sources and appropriate use of PPE.

In the context of a greater social awareness of the impact of industry on the environment and surrounding communities, we have seen changes to the type of instructions and conditions for work included on permits. An excellent example is the use of IntelliPERMIT to support Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) protocols in food processing factories.

HACCP is a requirement for FDA approval for certain food and pharmaceutical products. In short, it is focussed on making sure that your morning yoghurt is not flavoured with axel grease, that the number of bolts in your muesli is minimised and that there are no pigeon droppings in your sugar. (You can read more about HACCP here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazard_Analysis_and_Critical_Control_Points )

IntelliPERMIT assists permit issuers to identify work taking place in HACCP-related areas and ensures that the appropriate measures to be taken are acknowledged on the permits. Once the job is complete, the responsible team is prompted to make certain that hygiene guards have been replaced and maintenance debris such as iron filings or grease have been cleared. These steps are signed off by the appropriate HACCP authorities in the specific work area (as verified by their competencies in IntelliPERMIT.) The benefit of this approach is that it streamlines the work approval process and eliminates the need for dedicated HACCP-related forms to be completed and signed off. Furthermore, the system provides a time-stamped audit trail to help with the investigation of any non-conformances.

The benefits of a well planned and comprehensive permit system needn’t stop at the factory gate: they may be traced through the supply chain right onto the shelves of your local grocery store.

Posted at 16:26 by Scott Bredin | Category: IntelliPERMIT; Operations Suite | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2010/06/24

“OpSUITE Information Days” receives the thumbs up

Delegates who attended the two successful OpSUITE™ Information Days in Johannesburg and in Durban gave the event an overwhelming “Excellent” rating based on the feedback received afterwards.

The theme “Some things work better together” was illustrated through a series of interactive demos that showcased the OpSUITE solutions working in a typical control room environment. The integrated nature of plant operations requires that production logs, work orders, permits and SHEQ activities are all managed in a common system to improve productivity and operations performance.

ApplyIT is actively working on combining OpSUITE with SharePoint and some of these concepts were illustrated at the Johannesburg information days, held appropriately at the Microsoft office. The recent launch of Office 2010 and the new version of SharePoint unlock great opportunities for manufacturing companies which are further strengthened with a powerful transactional system (OpSUITE) running on SQL Server.

The underlying message was that when exceptional technologies from ApplyIT and Microsoft are combined with good people, plant performance can be improved dramatically, leading to improved throughput, less downtime, reduced waste, safer operations and ultimately improved profits.

The networking and discussion opportunities at these events prove to be invaluable to customers, partners and ApplyIT’s product team. The overall consensus is that attending Information Days is time well spent and the event format should be repeated in future!

Posted at 10:39 by Gavin Halse | Category: Operations Suite; FlexiLOG; IntelliPERMIT; OptiRUN; SmartSURE | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2009/12/31

Enhancements to IntelliPERMIT workflow and rules

Version 5.0 of IntelliPERMIT includes a number of subtle enhancements to the underlying workflow and rules engine of the system. These enhanced capabilities will not disrupt the functioning of existing systems, nor require any re-configuration unless the site specifically requires the new functionality. While the technical details of these changes may seem slightly obscure, the intention behind them is to allow the system to more efficiently guide users through the permit process and allow them to produce permits that more accurately reflect the requirements of a task.

Here are four examples:

1. Precautions and Preparation questions may be configured to appear in the Permit Wizard even if not linked to a specific hazard. This is useful in a scenario where a question must be asked on all permits across site but is not necessarily associated with a hazard. Unless a hazard is linked to this question, no rule is applied to the given answer. However, the user is forced to supply an answer.

2. Authorisation questions may now be linked to specific hazards. If a question is linked to a hazard, then it only appears if the permit includes that associated hazard. A practical example of where this may be used is in gas testing where a question should only be displayed and the answer validated if a gas hazard is included on the permit.

3. The workflow actions may be optionally configured to only appear for specific permit types or if the permit includes specified hazards. If no hazard or permit type is specified in the configuration, then the action will be visible for all permit types and for all hazards. Again, this is useful to more closely tailor the workflow to the requirements of the specific permit and ensure that users are only presented with relevant actions to perform.

4. Question rules now support the "NOT" operator. This allows a rule to be set that allows any answer except a specific response. For example, a question may have 3 options in a dropdown: Yes, No and N/A; and a rule set to "NOT No". This means that both "Yes" and "N/A" will be valid responses to this question.

Posted at 11:35 by Scott Bredin | Category: Feature Focus; IntelliPERMIT | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2009/12/29

Two new rules for IntelliPERMIT

The set of rules supported by IntelliPERMIT continues to grow.

Rule #33 states that a permit acceptor may not suspend more than one permit at a time. This rule is useful in scenarios where isolations are being removed for testing or commissioning of equipment that has been worked on. The rule should be enabled in order to control this process and ensure that the responsible person deals only with a single commissioning activity at a time.

Rule #34 is designed to limit access to particular operations to the person who initiated/applied for the permit. For instance, this is a useful control to ensure that only the original applicant can edit a permit (even prior to it being issued.)

Both of these rules will be published for general release with version 5. (Hotfixes for version 4.3 SP4 are available on demand)

A more general enhancement also included in version 5 is the opening up of the permit editing process to allow for additional rules to be added without making changes to the core software.

Posted at 21:44 by Scott Bredin | Category: IntelliPERMIT; Feature Focus | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2009/12/03

Technology Design objectives for OpSuite Version 5

The ApplyIT product team has been hard at work building the new version 5 of OpSuite and preparing for general availability in 2010. This version includes several functionality enhancements that have already been deployed at early adopter customers during the course of 2009. However many more enhancements are in progress and will be delivered within the next couple of months.

In summary

Version 5 is a major release of OpSuite with most of the changes taking place in the underlying technology. However the requirements of users have not been ignored and a significant effort is going into enhancing the Version 5 user interfaces while making the software more responsive, more user friendly and intuitive to use.

OpSuite 5.0 will focus on enhancements to the Foundation Server, FlexiLOG and IntelliPERMIT. Upgrades to OptiRUN and SmartSURE are planned in the subsequent version 5.1 release cycle shortly afterwards.

Design goals

The design intent of OpSuite 5.x is to extend the product reach through mobile technology, Microsoft SharePoint (MOSS) integration, improved workflow, new biometrics and security capabilities and integration points into third party systems such as SCADA, site access control etc. Furthermore the capabilities of all four modules will be leveraged to provide a comprehensive operations management and SHEQ system that will cover all aspects of operations and safety, from sustainability management and reporting right through to the plant operations themselves (e.g. permit to work and maintenance work orders). The overall capability is only available in OpSuite.

Module enhancements

IntelliPERMIT version 5 will including improvements to competencies, user management, isolation management, dual signature capability, enhanced editing capabilities and several user interface improvements based on leading technologies.

FlexiLOG version 5 will include improved data capture and validation capabilities, improved control of duplicate entries, improved linking and moving of information between logs, spell checks and enhanced templates. A major design goal of FlexiLOG 5.x is to deliver pre-packaged solution accelerators that fast track configuration and deployment of proven solutions for improving production processes. These solutions might include contractor management, enterprise level incident reporting and investigation to compliment and further enhance SmartSURE, surveys, workplace and job observation capabilities, risk assessment methodologies etc.

Overall the OpSuite foundation improvements include enhancements to reporting, KPI metrics and relevant dash board presentations.

Technology refresh

OpSuite version 5.0 introduces a full technology refresh with improved administration tools and several enhancements to facilitate deployment. The new version is built on new technology (Microsoft’s .NET) while maintaining compatibility with the underlying SQL server 2005 or 2008 database. Deployment will be enhanced through “click once” deployment technologies which will make administration of rich client installations and upgrades significantly more efficient.

To improve the user interface and enable rapid addition of new features going forward, the version 5 FlexiLOG and IntelliPERMIT applications will be delivered through a combination of Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) technology and ASP.NET applications.

The underlying reason for the technology refresh is to future proof OpSuite and benefit from the new technologies from Microsoft. Once our development environment is completely migrated to the latest Microsoft Visual Studio 2010, new capabilities and features will be built and deployed very quickly.

There is a tremendous amount of work being done to ensure that when Version 5 reaches general availability it will impress customers with a range of new capabilities that will continue to provide benefits into the future.

Posted at 16:18 by Gavin Halse | Category: Feature Focus; Operations Suite; FlexiLOG; IntelliPERMIT; OptiRUN; SmartSURE | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2009/11/20

Exporting Opsuite Report Data to Excel

An often overlooked feature of the reports in Operations Suite is that they may be exported to a number of alternative formats such as PDF, TIFF and MS Excel. Accessing this feature could not be easier: select the required format from the dropdown in the toolbar, and click <Export>. You will be prompted to either save the file, or open the file in the relevant application - Voila!

Posted at 00:14 by Scott Bredin | Category: Feature Focus; Operations Suite; FlexiLOG; IntelliPERMIT; Consolidations | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2009/06/11

Closing the loop on IntelliPERMIT exceptions

Business Rule 32: The permit may not be signed unless all related exceptions have been investigated.

To understand the reason for adding this rule to the system it is necessary to first recap some of the basic principles of the rules engine in IntelliPERMIT.

In IntelliPERMIT there are 4 possible settings for rules: “Ignore”, “Alert”, “Raise Exception” and “Disallow”. The “Disallow” and “Ignore” options are very simple to describe and represent the a simple world in with no shades of grey or room for doubt. Either you comply with the rule set to “Disallow” or the system will prevent you from proceeding any further full-stop.

In certain circumstances it may be appropriate to simply remind a person about a non-critical item. Such a rule is set to “Alert” and all the user has to do is acknowledge the alert with no further explanation or reason required. This is useful functionality for reminding people to think through elements of the job that may, or may not be applicable, such as communication with other parties involved.

However, in other cases it is important to record why a particular rule or recommended good practice was bypassed. The “Raise Exception” option will allow the user to continue with the transaction only if they supply a reason for their decision in this regard. The details of the rule and the reason provided are emailed to the user’s manager or to a system administrator for investigation. The investigator is obliged to provide feedback on the exception and formally sign it off.

Which brings me back to Business Rule 32 (BR32). The system does not differentiate between adequate and unacceptable reasons provided by users when exceptions are raised and the system allows the permit to be processed without further intervention. Depending upon the levels of discipline in the organisation, exceptions may or may not be investigated. However, the new BR32 provides a mechanism to prevent permits from being finally Accepted Back (or “Revoked” in the preferred terminology of some organisations) unless all of the exceptions raised on the permit have been investigated and signed off.

Since this rule may be enforced at any point in the permit workflow, it may also be used to ensure that any exceptions raised during the permit application process have been dealt with prior to the permit being issued and accepted by the people whose lives may depend on the judgement of the permit signatories.

(Note: Business Rule 32 is planned for formal release with version 5.0. However, it will also be made available on demand as a Hotfix to any site running version 4.3 SP2 or later)

Posted at 06:29 by Scott Bredin | Category: IntelliPERMIT | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)

2009/01/13

The importance of pleasant surprises in software

We are very used to associating unpleasant surprises with software. Like their non-digital progenitors, bugs infest the entire ecosystem of software. As code complexity increases, not even the most carefully engineered systems are immune. There as a massive body of literature devoted to software bugs - just take a look at the Wikipedia entry on the subject to get a taste: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_bug

For the most part then, the intersection of 'software' and 'surprise' is a crop of failure and frustration. However, there is a rarer species of software surprise that blossoms with delight and revelation.

Four years ago I was involved in the commissioning of IntelliPERMIT at a large smelter. According to the company procedures, all permits expired at 6am. Permit #1 was issued at 6:02am on the new software by a plant operator by the name of Lucky. Like his counterparts, Lucky had attended the permit issuer training the previous week. While he knew where to "click next", his learning had not yet been reinforced by practice. More importantly, he was thoroughly familiar with his plant and the rules for working safely in a highly hazardous environment. After working through the details of the permit (for repairing molten metal ladles), he attempted to submit the permit only to have the system point out a missing item of Personal Protective Equipment. Lucky immediately recognised his oversight, smiled broadly and corrected the permit before issuing it to the work team

The software development team responsible for automating the permit issue process had decided that a Wizard-type interface was most appropriate for breaking up and presenting the potentially complex process into manageable bites for users. This type of interface also encourages users to think about the consequences of their selections/actions: we are working in this area; therefore we will encounter hazards a, b and c; and so we will need to mitigate the risks with the following steps… and if I get it wrong I will be directed how to fix the problem. The experience is radically different from completing a pre-printed form with unrelated and often irrelevant information.

The "Lucky moment" has stayed with me as a simple example of the potential for software to exercise a benign influence over our lives. It needs to do so not through condescension or overly clever “second guessing”, but through reasoned, timeous guidance.

Posted at 22:27 by Scott Bredin | Category: IntelliPERMIT | Permalink | Email this Post | Comments (0)