It’s Good Business to Create Situational Awareness

To achieve operation efficiency organization must break down silos and empower teams with real-time situational awareness to improve decision making.

When former IBM President Thomas Watson Jr. told Wharton students in 1973 that “Good design is good business," the idea seemed to be a stretch, and even a bit silly. The design and business symbiosis Watson advocated then was more prophecy than reality—today, innovation is inextricably linked with design, and good design has become a crucial tool to combat commoditization. Research has proven that user experience is an important differentiator in both products and processes. Why? Because improving overall user experience is good for business.

HMI/SCADA Promote Situational Awareness

Effective user experiences do not happen by chance. They are purposely implemented through thoughtful design processes to create solutions meeting both business and user needs, resulting in systems that are intuitive, useful, and pleasant to use. This is also true when it comes to HMI and SCADA systems, where raw data and processed information is too often siloed, and there is a great need to consolidate these resources in context so users can make better-informed decisions.

The ‘changing of the guard’ taking place in the industrial workforce is further driving the push for better design because incoming workers expect industrial applications to be as easy to use as consumer applications. This new generation entering the workforce has held computers in their hands for their entire lives, they question the status quo, and are not willing to accept the constraints of yesterday’s technology. This generation will not tolerate poor usability in the applications they rely on to accomplish critical daily tasks because they already interact with exceptional software products every day outside of work.

Situational Awareness at the Intersection of Look, Feel, and Usability

Systems that are just pretty, or are overly limiting, will not satisfy end users. A poor user experience limits operational efficiency, leading to many negative consequences including:

• Nuisance alarms.
• Overload of useless information.
• Operator fatigue.
• Decreased productivity.
• Reduced response time.
• Increased errors.
• Additional training requirements.
• Poor job satisfaction.
• Employee turnover.

HMI or SCADA systems deliver a satisfying user experience and the greatest situational awareness when it functions at the intersection of a concise look, an intuitive feel, and efficient usability. The right contextual information, delivered real-time to the workers who need it, empowers those workers, creating the opportunity for them to improve efficiency and productivity.

This is true for all team members across many industrial sectors including consumer packaged goods, power, chemicals, and more.

AVEVA can help you create situational awareness using modern process visualization digital technologies. Providing end users what they need to achieve operational excellence is instrumental for peak production, efficiency, asset management, quality, compliance, and a satisfied workforce.

Learn how AVEVA can help improve your team’s situational awareness.