Traditionally, only control room operators are trained with an Operator Training Simulator. However, the real plant is operated by control room operators AND field operators: operations in the control room together with operations in the field determine the performance of the plant. Especially while handling upsets, starting-up the plant or shutting it down a lot of field operations are required. In those cases communication between all operators involved is crucial.
Several OTS vendors are putting great efforts in developing 3D Virtual worlds to mimic the real plant and although this is great for Greenfield plants or for situations where the team that is to be trained is far away from the actual plant, it remains a form of “serious gaming” at best. Why not use the real plant for realistic trainings?
Our company OTS (Operator Training Solutions) developed a tool to make it possible to train control room operators together with field operators. Please click here to read a recent white paper on the subject. While training, the control room operators use an exact copy of the real DCS. Field operators perform the field operations in the field itself, however not on the real equipment, but via an ATEX approved smart device, connected to the OTS. This is so close to reality that our customer Huntsman refers to this as: Real Reality.
Have a look at this short (2 min.) movie of our satisfied customer to get an impression of how it works: Here are some nice pictures of our Field Operator App “In Action”: Let us know what you think about using Real Reality for Training Operator Crews in the comment box below, such that we can all learn something from it.
To your success!
Mathieu.
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PS: please browse to our OTS website to learn more about our Operator Training Solutions