ISA to develop HMI standard

InTech, Jul 2005

ISA has formed a new standards development committee on human-machine interface (HMI).

The committee is seeking input and participation as it formulates a scope and plan of action. ISA established ISA-SP101 based on input from users across industry that HMI guidelines and standards would provide multiple benefits, including:

* Reducing operator mistakes and misinterpreta tions via clear and intuitive representations of conditions and operator control interfaces.

* Reducing learning curves for new operators, and allowing operators to move from one system to another (often within the same plant) with mini mal retraining.

* Assisting communications and reducing errors between geographically dispersed groups.

* Reducing costs of re-invention.

* Reducing rework because differences in design philosophies resolve before hand.

* Enabling applications development using HMI features that will appear in future systems and HMI upgrades.

The overall scope of the HMI standards project is to cover all sectors of process and discrete manufacturing.

Initial ideas regarding the specifics of ISASP101's work include menu hierarchies, screen navigation conventions, graphics and color standards, dynamic elements, alarming conventions, security methods and electronic signature attributes, interfaces with background programming and historical databases, popup conventions, help screens and methods used to work with alarms, and program object interfaces. Configuration interfaces to databases, servers, OLE servers, and networks could be included.

For more information, contact Charley Robinson, ISA Standards, crobinson@isa.org or at 919-9909213.