Digital Field Assistant - Your Partner in Field

In a typical process plant, field personnel perform daily activities, such as operator rounds, patrol inspection, preventive maintenance, and basic equipment care.

These activities not only ensure that compliance and regulations are met, but they also help detect equipment failures early such that the resulting production slowdowns or shutdowns and their associated losses can be avoided.

During the field rounds, intention and duty of the operator is to observe and log all sorts of abnormalities, but this is generally done by making a note on paper or verbally reporting concerns to superiors. Then, the collected data is consolidated into a software system or spreadsheet, and reports are created for future reference.

During fieldwork, operators face a host of challenges, many of which occur because of the manual paper-based processes. Let’s consider some of them:

1.     Operators’ rounds involve manual data entry into a paper checklist. Not only is this error prone and time consuming, but it’s also monotonous in nature and leads to lower the operators’ enthusiasm in detecting abnormalities and analyzing them.

2.     Due to the limitations on available information and historical references, it’s difficult to perform fieldwork without frequent support requests or queries to supervisors or board members.

3.     It is cumbersome for operators to make round trips to the office to get hard copies of instruction manuals or other reference documents while working on an abnormal situation.

4.     Verbal incident reporting is prone to miscommunication, and some concerned personnel may be left out of the information loop.

5.     Supervisors also face difficulties due to manual practices, because status of field work is unclear, and it becomes hard for them to analyze the collected data.

Information can be overlooked at times, since operators manually manage many tasks and documents, such as inspection results. In some cases, this leads to missed inspections or over-maintenance.

We believe these challenges can be addressed by digital transformation of field activities.

Yokogawa’s Field Assistant is an enabler of digital transformation of field activities in a process plant. It’s a mobility solution that assists operator rounds, preventive maintenance, and other operational field tasks. Thus, it enhances safety, reliability, efficiency, and communication, not only within each individual department, but also across the organization.

The Field Assistant consists of a simple, on-premise server and web and mobile applications. 
The mobile application is designed to work off-line as well during the field activities.

Let’s take a look at the overall workflow with Yokogawa’s Field Assistant.

Figure 1: Field Assistant’s Workflow

The workflow starts with the engineering phase, where master data (e.g., the equipment hierarchy, shift information, procedures and task schedules) are defined.

During the operations phase, this data is used to generate daily task assignments.

On a typical workday, a field operator downloads their assigned tasks to their mobile device after arriving at the office where the network is available. They then start executing the downloaded tasks on the patrol route. While in the field, the operator may not be connected to the office network. However, the Field Assistant makes it possible for them to refer relevant information, even during the offline mode.

For operators, performing the daily patrol with the Field Assistant will provide greater confidence and enthusiasm for abnormality detection, as described below.

Operators execute their assigned tasks along the patrol or inspection route; these could include completing checklists or procedures guiding the maintenance of the specified equipment.

While executing this procedure, operators have all the equipment information needed at their fingertips, as the Field Assistant gives them access to equipment information, work result history for the equipment, equipment log history, equipment specifications such as type and class, photos, and so on. Having Field Assistant in hand gives lot of confidence to operator about the field information, by logging all the big and small abnormalities observed during the field round.

The procedure or checklist may include a task to log field readings; this is especially true for operators managing analog gauges or tank levels, which may not be connected to a control system. The Field Assistant equips the operator with information of the equipment such as specification, picture and documents, and provides access to operational boundaries or limits, past logged values, and historical trends. By providing that information, the Field Assistant allows operators to verify whether the values are in the normal range based on historical trends and to then determine appropriate actions.

If the operators have the need to refer to instruction manuals or other reference documents, they can do so very easily, since all documents are pre-downloaded on their Field Assistant device, and these are accessible based on their context of operation.

Information missed in the field can be very dangerous for manufacturing plants; thus, information sharing is a key feature of the Field Assistant. During patrol, if the operator observes any abnormalities, he/she has to log them and report them to the supervisor. The operator can use the Field Assistant’s log feature to record information through photo, video, and audio attachments; doing so helps communicate observations clearly. The operator can also flag the log, which will lead to all subscribed users receiving an email notification when the log is uploaded to the server. Once all the field activities are completed, the operator returns to the office where he/she can connect to the network and uploads the patrol results and logs. Meanwhile, the supervisor can track operational progress using the interactive dashboard.

The Field Assistant can be used to generate several types of reports from work results and log information. This information can be used by the supervisor to optimize task schedules such that wasteful tasks are eliminated, leading to cost savings.

The Field Assistant has several benefits and mainly contributes to improved operations in three ways.

1.     For operators:

1.1. It improves the efficiency of field activities through digitalization.

1.2. It allows operators to record much more information than they can with paper checklists.

1.3. Digital technologies support the effective execution of field tasks, by reporting correct issue to the right maintenance team to act faster.

1.4. It requires less effort to accurately report issues.

2.     For management: 

2.1. It provides more insight into field operations.

2.2. Managers can check current field operational progress at a glance.

2.3. Managers can check work results and shift reports easily and retrieve desired information with less effort.

2.4. Managers can check the status of any device using the trend graph.

3.     For sustainability of field operations:

3.1. Field operations can be improved by utilizing long-term data obtained and stored in the database.

3.2. Field Assistant also optimizes maintenance timing for each piece of equipment based on actual maintenance records.

3.3. The Field Assistant reduces breakdown maintenance.

The previous version of the Field Assistant, R2.04, was only available for use on Android devices. To meet the requirements of the market, R2.05 is now supported for use with “Windows Tablet” devices as well. Both Android and Windows devices can scan QR codes, NFC, and RFID to detect the target equipment. This feature improves the reliability of fieldwork.

Figure 2: A person wearing RealWear head-mounted computer

Latest Features of Field Assistant: -

1.     Hands-free operation with RealWear head-mounted computers
Field Assistant R2.05 now supports RealWear’s HMT-1 and HMT-1Z1 lineup of hands-free head-mounted computers. Using the hands-free device, field service personnel can issue voice commands to the Field Assistant software to, for example, input work results and look up information.

2.     Support for use on Windows tablets
In addition to supporting the Android platform, Field Assistant R2.05 now includes a Windows version that can run on Windows tablets. Customers can thus freely use this software on whichever mobile device best meets their application requirements.