xvi Foreword
Safety statistics tell us that the number one cause of all industrial accidents is human
error. One could refer to Three-Mile Island, where operators poured water into the instru-
ment air supply; the BP accident, where there was no automation to keep the drill pipe
straight; the ferry accident in Korea, where safety overrides were not provided to prevent
the captain from turning sharply into a fast ocean current; or airplane accidents, where
pilots are allowed to fly into mountains or attempt to land at wrong speeds. Yet we know
that in addition to its other contributions, automation can overrule the actions of pan-
icked or badly trained operators who often make the wrong decisions in emergencies.
To achieve this higher level of industrial safety, an override safety control (OSC)
layer of safety automation is being added to our control systems, one that cannot be
turned off or overruled by anything or anybody. With this design, if the plant condi-
tions enter a highly accident-prone life- or safety-threatening region of operation, the
uninterruptible safe shutdown of the plant is automatically triggered. The functioning
of this layer of automation is free from possible cyber attacks because it is not con-
nected to the Internet at all. In short, once the OSC layer of protection is activated, the
plant is shutting down and nothing and nobody can prevent that.
In addition to safety improvements, advances in standardization are also taking place.
Just as it occurred in the “analog age,” a global standard is now evolving for digital
communication that could link all digital “black boxes” and could also act as a “transla-
tor” for those automation devices that were not designed to “speak the same language.”
Naturally, this standardization should apply to both wired and wireless systems, thereby
eliminating “captive markets” and allowing the easy mixing of different manufacturers’
products in the same control loop. This trend is most welcome because once completed,
it will allow the automation and process control engineers to once again concentrate
on designing safe and optimized control systems and not worry about the possibility
that the “black boxes” of the different suppliers might not be able to talk to each other.
Therefore it is hoped that the “Babel of communication protocols” will shortly be over.
The automation profession can simultaneously increase gross domestic product
and industrial profitability without building a single new plant, just by optimizing
existing ones. We can achieve that goal while also reducing both pollution and energy
consumption, solely through applying the state-of-the art of automation. We can
increase productivity without using a single pound of additional raw material and
without spending a single additional BTU of energy. We can also protect our indus-
tries not only from human errors but also from sabotage or cyber terrorism by replac-
ing manual control with OSC-type automatic safety controls.
Our profession can do all this and much more, but to do so it is necessary for the
people entering or working in this field to have an overall view of this profession, and
this book of Dr. Sharma serves that goal.
May 1, 2016
Stamford CT, USA
Béla Lipták
[email protected]
Béla Lipták is president of the consulting firm Lipták Associates, PC.