2024 Community of Human and Organizational Learning 30th Annual Conference

“No one ever rises to the occasion, but rather, they sink to their highest level of preparation”.
Significant increases in losses attributed to the lack of operator response, as well as an influx of inexperienced operators at the control boards of industrial manufacturing complexes, is the driving the need for improvements in operator training procedures. Scenario-based training should be implemented as a reoccurring part of the ongoing training of all operators within industrial operations. Scenario-based training includes a detailed analysis and assessment of an operator’s response to specific abnormal situations, and what corrective actions need to be made under these adverse conditions. The goal being to minimize the response time for operators to assess a specific situation and utilize conditioned responses to limit and prevent catastrophic loss from occurring; thus, protecting the safety of plant personnel and the integrity of processed machinery.
Industrial complexes across the planet are faced with a consistent problem of experienced operators retiring and taking decades of real-world experience with them. Many of these retirees have had long careers and witnessed the modernization of automatic control systems dedicated to the safety of the equipment and plant personnel. They began their careers operating the plants with analog components, manual valves, visual gauges, and radios. Furthermore, less experienced operators coming into the workforce have never witnessed a large-scale, low probability, high severity event such as explosions caused by leaking fuel systems, or a fire involving pressurized hydraulic fluids or lubrication oil cascading down multiple tiers and pooling under critical equipment. Modern automatic control systems have made routine operations easier for the operator, although the infrequent and difficult scenarios of abnormal conditions are still required to be controlled by their swift actions.
Operator error is an ever-increasing loss driver in industrial facilities. Statistics from a large property insurer reported over 1000 documented incidents in the last 10 years that were caused or worsened by an operator error. Effective operators are responsible for the identification of opportunities to improve process flow, the detection of concerns to normal operations, the knowledge and capability to correct any abnormal situation, and the ability and authority to shut down operations and or bring the process to a safe state under emergency response conditions. However, statistics show that operators in modern industrial facilities are not being effectively trained to minimize damages during an abnormal situation, prolonging corrective actions, and sometimes exacerbating the size and scope of the loss. The only solution is a Scenario Based Training Program, customized to the specific equipment of the plant, and tailored to the operators and plant personnel.