DINOSAURS TO DYNAMICS

New plant designs and requirements have created an ever-increasing amount of data available to the operator while placing new demand for rapid - and accurate - human response. The traditional control room with 100-foot instrument panels has gone the way of the dinosaur, replaced by one or more terminals of monitors tied to a host. Since all plant operations have essentially been reduced to images on a CRT, managers need to take a special look at the man-machine interface (MMI). Criteria for an effective MMI are cited, and details of implementation of MMI are addressed, including software selection, compatibility, packing flexibility, and an architecture optimized for graphics display.