Finding better ways to help workers keep their eyes on the prize—whether it’s monitoring key performance indicators (KPIs) for productivity and quality or detecting the reason for a fault in a machine’s performance—is leading to the development of increasingly sophisticated visualization tools for human-machine interfaces (HMIs) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) applications.
The key goals are threefold: enable mobility, so workers can see what’s happening on whatever screen they’re using, whether standard HMI hardware, smartphone or tablet; provide context beyond the machine level to support data interpretation and decision-making; and empower workers to take action from wherever they are, enabling them to respond in real time even from remote locations.
