ABB Ability™ Symphony Plus S+ Operations

Symphony® Plus, with its intuitive, easy-to-use human machine interface (HMI), leads operators to greater awareness, faster response and better decisions.

S+ Operations has a flexible, scalable, fault tolerant design built specifically with the control room operator in mind. It’s simple, intuitive navigation allows the operator to perform at their best when managing normal and non-normal operations, plant information and alarms and applying process optimization strategies.

Full support of industry communication standards simplifies integration, set-up and maintenance of plant systems and devices
Fully Integrated operations greatly improves operators decision making
Redundancy at all levels maximizes production and process uptime
Flexible architecture can be expanded as needed and reduces training and maintenance costs

Robust and flexible operations architecture

Four pillars of Operator Effectiveness

ABB works continuously to improve operator effectiveness and to empower operators to do their job more efficiently and make correct, informed and timely decisions. To remove the clutter and make it easier to develop a strategy, we have grouped technology and best-practice solutions into four core disciplines known as the Four pillars of Operator Effectiveness

Discover each pillar by expanding each of the sections below and learn more from the
S+ Operations Brochure.

Download the white paper

Keeping the operator in focus

Integrated operations

High performance operator workplace

Attention to human factors

Operator competence

Integrated operations

Raw data and other input must be transformed into actionable information in context with plant equipment to promote better decision making. The challenge is to provide seamless access to multiple sources of information while being careful not to overload the operator with irrelevant data.

To help the operator be more efficient in his daily tasks S+ Operations includes integrated solutions as shown below.

Secure Operations

Secure environment

Implementing and maintaining a secure and reliable control environment with minimal effort and time is a challenging mission faced by all plant operators and personnel today.

Based on the IEC 62351-8 security standard, S+ Operations defines rights and roles for a user or user groups with very fine granularity. Sophisticated authorization and role-based access control (RBAC) provide a tight guard against unwanted activities.

User authentication
Role-based access control (RBAC)
Event logging / audit trails
USB event logging
Back-up / restore
Hardened hosts
Host firewall configuration
Antivirus
Network zones
Security patch validation

Alarm Management

S+ Operations’ advanced alarm management functions provide truly integrated process condition information for timely and efficient alarm management.

S+ Operations is putting its Alarm Management solutions to work throughout the power generation industry. The sophisticated alarm management system helps operators handle the most demanding and critical situations, avoiding costly downtime.

Read more in the S+ Operations Alarm Management Brochure.

Alarm Portal

Remove unnecessary alarms to bring those alarms that need action to the forefront and define alarm relevancy to the operator.

Monitor, manage and optimize alarm management with the collection of alarm analysis tools in Alarm Portal

Alarm Portal features many graphical and analytical alarm management tools:

Alarm Priority Distribution
Alarm Duration
Alarm Performance levels
Alarm and event frequency
Alarms over time
Time to acknowledge

Detailed event sequence
Control loops in manual mode
Standing alarms
Operator actions
Intervals exceeding threshold
Co-occurrences

ABB Ability™ Symphony® Plus Alarm Portal

Download the Alarm Portal brochure

Download the white paper

Keeping the operator in focus

Geographical Information System (GIS) integration

Integrated Geographical Information System

Cross navigation between GIS and process objects (tags, alarms, graphics etc.)
Alarm Visualization and acknowledgement directly on the maps
Combine temporal and spatial representation of data in GIS
Independent of maps vendor – fully compatible with maps from vendors like ESRI ArcGIS, Google, Bing
Ability to use own geo-database, GIS map-server and web-based GIS client visualization
Enhanced security inside the control room – S+ Operations GIS allows full functionality without requiring internet connection

Small label

S+ Operations Geographical Information System

Remote Operation - Pocket Portal Operator Client

Pocket portal allows to easily expand user operations directly from a smartphone, tablet or laptop

Platform independent, HTML5 web-based application
Provides access to real-time and historical data simultaneously in one display
Access to device status, process conditions, trends, alarms and events, performance dashboards, etc.
Full touch-based design suited for mobile devices
Runs within any browser without need for additional client software
Secure using protocol encryption and user access control

Pocket Portal Operator Client

Pocket Portal Operator Client is the extended functionality of the well-known Pocket portal offering. The Pocket Portal Operator Client allows for the remote operator to enter a value to the S+ Operations system. This is the perfect solution for:

For SCADA projects which require the remote operator to take control if needed
Water Utilities which have the need to enter lad data (samples) into the Symphony Plus system (Value and Status of the lab value)
Any other remote operator solution where intervention may be required.

HTML5-based Operator platform

S+ Operations Pocket Portal

Information Management

S+ Operations Historian

S+ Operations features a built in Historian that produces maintenance, trend, and balance reports as well as supports thin client (web-based) and full client for secure access to plant data.

Easy and flexible data access for operators, supervisors, engineers and management
Remote desktop manager displays
Seamless view of real-time and history
Discrete tag tickers / KPI reporting
History data from all sources
Flexible ready made report templates (e.g. SOE, trip, operation, status, etc.)
Integrated applications assess plant equipment performance
Monitor and report equipment degradation
Performance displays indicate effects of current conditions on plant heat rate and fuel costs
Performance alarms and CMMS connectivity streamlines maintenance

Plant optimization

Utilities are constantly forced to optimize plant operation and to strictly control life cycle cost in order to protect the investment. ABB offers substantial support to meet these demanding challenges.

Read more about Plant Optimization.

High performance operator workplace

The user interface must be intuitive and allow operators to manage views dynamically and efficiently.

A high-performance interface supports situation awareness with how the information is displayed. It supports abnormal situation handling through efficient navigation and the application of best practices in alarm management.

Drive effective operations with complete plant information

Operator effectiveness is fundamental to a plant’s performance. However, with fewer plant operators, a generational shift in the operator workforce, and increasing complexity of plant operations, it is becoming ever more challenging.

Symphony® Plus, with its intuitive, easy-to-use human machine interface (HMI), leads operators to greater awareness, faster response and better decisions.

S+ Operations is designed for high performance in every aspect involved: human machine interface, integrated operations, seamless life cycle management, information management, alarm management, security, process optimization, and with flexible, scalable fault-tolerant design.

S+ Operations is built on the foundation of field proven technology, and provides a seamless evolution path for human machine interfaces of previous generations.

Operator effectiveness

The key to operator effectiveness

In the era of big data and the Internet of Things, power plants have the capacity to produce more data in a single day than they did in a month 10 years ago. Intelligent equipment, smart devices and sophisticated control systems continuously monitor plant performance, producing a constant flow of measurements and readings on every asset in the plant. But if this data is not provided in context, it can result in information overload and lead to poor decision-making, production loss and reduced profitability.

Staff in all parts of the power plant are dependent on speedy access to the information they need when they need it, none more so than the plant operators. The challenge for HMI vendors is to provide staff - and operators in particular - with the information they require to make correct and timely decisions, while excluding all the information they do not need. The new generation of high-performance HMIs is designed to do this.

Learn more from In Control.

Download the white paper

Keeping the operator in focus

High performance HMI

Leading paths to greater awareness, faster response and better decisions

Handling the unplanned outages has become the number-one priority for many companies today. On an average, operators deal with thousands of alarms per day. Hence, they should face no more than two alarms per 10-minute period but alarm overload distracts the operators and often causes unplanned downtime.

For maximum plant performance, high performance HMI and advanced alarm management helps to improve the operator's tools and work environment. An ABB case study reveals savings of more than $800,000 from upgrading to a high performance HMI.

High performance graphics

Improve operator effectiveness by increasing the functionality of the HMI with high performance graphics. Using intuitive graphical representation of aspects of the plant and a phased approach grayscale, the current HMI system can be transformed to allow substantial improvements in response time, reduce risks to the plant or personnel and faster training for new operators.

High performance graphics are excellent for the dynamic plant with indication that is easily changed based on the state of the plant, improving overall awareness.

Importance of HMI

In control rooms of old, the number of alarms was limited by the amount of space on the control room panel board and the cost of wiring equipment from the production area to the board.

Annunciators, indicators and switches (to acknowledge and clear a resolved alarm) had to be essential to justify a place on the panel. If a new alarm was needed, an existing alarm would usually have to make way.

This began to change with digital signals and the distributed control system (DCS) in the 1980s. Panel boards were replaced by monitors and servers, and signals were transmitted from plant equipment to computer processors, where the signals were turned into actionable information. But the alarms were overloading the control room and terms such as flooding, nuisance, chattering, fleeting and stale were coined to describe them and their effect on the operators.

The modern HMIs are equipped with high performance grayscale graphics, using color carefully and provide effective alarm handling and analysis.

The new generation of HMIs has a huge impact on operator performance:

they improve the operator’s ability to detect abnormal situations before an alarm occurs by a factor of five;

the operator success rate in handling abnormal situations is almost 100 percent; and,

the time it takes to correctly handle the situation is almost half that of operators working with traditional HMIs.

Besides grayscale graphics and the consistent and careful use of color, shapes and motion, high performance graphics typically include the following features to maximize the attention and effectiveness of the operator:

Alarm priority colors are used for alarms only

Consistency in graphic layout to ensure operator situational awareness
Tab-based navigation for one-click access to primary displays
Embedded trends, which display historical data in a graphic to efficiently draw the attention of the operator to abnormalities and deviations
The normal operating range and high / low alarm limits are shown for each item of equipment using an intuitive bar graph (see Figure 5)
Bubble-up alarming allows the alarm with the highest priority to ‘bubble up’ above lower priority alarms associated with the same device

Integrated help displays in the form of pop-ups
Extendable faceplates put all the information the operator needs in one place
Level 1 surveillance of the entire plant or unit in one graphic to facilitate rapid visualization of the entire process, as well as KPIs
Level 2 visualization of specific parts of the process, providing alarms, information and controls for each area and easy navigation to level 3 graphics (P&ID style displays)
Alarm macros for condition-based alarming, if each alarm condition needs to be managed individually

Features of the HMI

Research shows that the new generation of HMIs has a huge impact on operator performance:
• they improve the operator’s ability to detect abnormal situations before an alarm occurs by a factor of five;
• the operator success rate in handling abnormal situations is almost 100 percent; and,
• the time it takes to correctly handle the situation is almost half that of operators working with traditional HMIs

Consistency in graphic layout to ensure operator situational awareness
Tab-based navigation for one-click access to primary displays
Embedded trends, which display historical data in a graphic to efficiently draw the attention of the operator to abnormalities and deviations
The normal operating range and high / low alarm limits are shown for each item of equipment using an intuitive bar graph
Bubble-up alarming allows the alarm with the highest priority to ‘bubble up’ above lower priority alarms associated with the same device

Integrated help displays in the form of pop-ups
Extendable faceplates put all the information the operator needs in one place
Bring attention to alarms that need action and define alarm relevancy to the operator, keeping the
operator focused on plant performance.
Monitor, manage and optimize alarms with the collection of alarm analysis tools in Alarm Portal.
Build reports to analyze all types of plant alarms.
Assess alarms via alarm rationalization packages.
Assign priorities to most frequent alarms.

Attention to human factors

Just as manufacturing processes are designed to be carefully controlled and manipulated to achieve desired outcomes, high-performance control rooms and operator stations must be designed with operator performance in mind.

Control Room Solutions

Control room operators make hundreds of decisions - decisions that have a great impact on productivity, quality and safety. The more alert, stimulated and harmonious they are, the better decisions they make.

Our designs can be applied to any industry or utility. The reference list is extensive: from transport, oil & gas, power generation, mining and manufacturing process control to police, fire and ambulance services.

Learn more about Control Room Solutions.

Watch now: The Control Room Transformation

We create happier, more alert, and less stressed operators. Generating safe and efficient productions.
Prepare for your Control Room Design Experience.

Extended Operator Workplace - EOW

The environment created by ABB's Extended Operator Workplace (EOW) platform keeps the operator in focus by providing unparalleled workplace ergonomics plus a close pre-integrated large-screen overview for clear and concise plant-wide visualization. The EOW platform is much more than just a traditional operator desk. It includes everything needed to fulfill the latest human factor standards.

Learn more about Control Room Consoles: EOW

Watch now: ABB Extended Operator Workplace

High performance control room consoles specially designed and optimized for 24/7 operations.

Control Room Design

A well designed control room solution, whether it's a new-build or upgrade, total or partial, is your assurance of safer, more alert operators, more attentive monitoring, quicker and more rational responses and higher productivity.

A conceptual design study gives each project a unique visual understanding of your different opportunities. Our control room solutions are based on an iterative process, taking considerations from both users and management into the final design.

Control room design benefits:

Improve operator alertness
Drive efficiency
Promote collaboration and teamwork
Cut total costs

Learn more about Control Room Design.

Watch now: ABB Control Room Design Services

The control room is the most important room in your facility. its where daily decision-making affects corporate goals and return on plant assets. In this movie we describe the changes of designing a new control room and how ABB can support its customers.

Operator competence

Operator training simulators ensure process operator competence and confidence when dealing with normal production as well as unplanned events.

In today‘s business climate simulators make even more sense due to the lack of experienced resources to instruct new, inexperienced operators. S+ Operations puts ABB’s four pillar approach into action to improve the operator’s visibility to plant performance while filtering out the “noise” to lead operators to greater awareness, faster response and better decisions

Operator training

Power Generation Training Center

Power Generation Training Center provides world class learning services to help you get the most out of your control system. A wide range of instructor-led and web-based courses, e-learnings and workshop are available to fit very different customer needs.

Read more.

Related offerings

ABB Ability™ Symphony® Plus

S+ Historian

S+ Engineering

Symphony® Plus SCADA

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Four pillars of Operator Effectiveness

Integrated operations

High performance operator workplace

Attention to human factors

Operator competence

Integrated operations

Secure Operations

Alarm Management

Alarm Portal

Geographical Information System (GIS) integration

Remote Operation - Pocket Portal Operator Client

Information Management

High performance operator workplace

Drive effective operations with complete plant information

Operator effectiveness

The key to operator effectiveness

High performance HMI

High performance graphics

Importance of HMI

Features of the HMI

Attention to human factors

Control Room Solutions

Extended Operator Workplace - EOW

Control Room Design

Operator competence

Operator training

Related offerings

abb.com privacy settings