Process plants are becoming increasingly autonomous to compensate for the lack of experienced plant operators. However, certain activities still need to be carried out by humans. To move from a low to a high level of autonomy, an evaluation of operator and plant behavior is necessary. This provides insights into suitable automation measures. Our contribution presents two methods for the creation, integration and evaluation of operator behavior in plant simulations. This will enable the identification and learning of suitable control actions for different levels of plant autonomy at an early stage in plant engineering.

Hazard & Operability (HAZOP) studies are a common expert-driven brainstorming methodology to analyze the safety of systems. In this paper, we propose an approach to integrate the content of HAZOP studies of (apparatus and process) by extracting and disclosing the causal structures implied in the HAZOPs. Thus, a methodology for data compression and integration of several HAZOP studies is supposed, resulting in a comprehensible summary of the underlying causal relationships withing the current system set-up. The resulting diagrams constitute a summary of the essential HAZOP studies by disclosing and visualizing the internal causal structures and are hence designed to facilitate interpretations and deductions performed by human operators and support machine-readability. The application of the methodology is implemented in the import of HAZOP-tables to Resource Description Framework (RDF). Using this formalized structure, the export to their original format as table is supported as well, so that the transformation can be conducted without the loss of information in both directions.

Discrete manufacturing and process industries move towards flexible production to cope with individualization. Safety systems often counteract these developments. In this paper, a generalized methodology to draft an overall safety concept using different technologies is presented. Motivated by use-cases from both domains, requirements for future safety systems are described and summarized in a structured way. These requirements are then generalized and classified in building blocks to fulfill the needs of flexible functional safety. A methodology to structure safety systems and their general parts is presented. The used building blocks refer to aspects as interfaces, communication, and certification. Within the building blocks different technologies can be applied, to fulfill the part of the safety system accordingly.

Modular process plants enable the process industry to adapt to volatile and fluctuating markets. The preferred process technology concept for these market scenarios is realized through combining pre-engineered process equipment assemblies (PEA) from different manufacturers with standardized interfaces. While the flexibility gain for this type of plants is high, the design of the safety systems of these modular plants in terms of exchangeability and compatibility is challenging. One solution could be the development of a safety-interface for PEAs to create flexible and scalable safety systems. The principles of modular basic process control are analyzed and requirements with respect to safety design are discussed. The authors provide a differentiation of the intramodular safety concept of a single PEA from the intermodular safety concept of a complete modular plant. A concept for safe and modular interaction of PEAs in a modular plant is developed and additionally validated on a basic demonstrator. Finally, from these findings, standardization requirements are provided and aspects for further research are pointed out.