Proficy Workflow to computerise water treatment

A GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms UK product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Sep 10, 2009

GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms has announced that the City of Haverhill, Massachusetts, has chosen Proficy Workflow to computerise water and wastewater treatment plants.

The city's water treatment plant operates five million gallons per day to 12 million gallons per day, serving approximately 52,000 households.

The wastewater treatment plant treats approximately 10 million gallons per day, with peak wet weather flow exceeding 60 million gallons per day.

The city purchased Proficy Workflow to computerise paper standard operating procedure (SOP) documents, including the state-mandated emergency response plan (ERP), low chlorine residual, high chlorine residual, low fluoride residual, high fluoride residual, high clear well, intrusion, clear well flush, chemical leak events and the high flow management plan for the wastewater treatment plant.

All of these SOPs exist in a paper flow-chart format, which makes them transportable into the Proficy Workflow solution.

John D'Aoust, manager of the Haverhill water treatment plant, said: 'Although we had written SOPs, we had no cohesive system for following them or important corrective actions.

'Now, we can use Proficy Workflow to guide the operations staff through proper procedures and help with a newly mandated ERP for water facilities and high flow management plans for wastewater facilities.

'Having the responses to meet state requirements in an electronic system can show that we followed procedures correctly.

'With Proficy Workflow, we know we can achieve consistent operations of the staff, learn how long it takes to accomplish steps and run our operations faster,' he added.

The city also had a recent situation where the plant lost power.

According to D'Aoust, his operations staff could have saved hours getting back online through Proficy Workflow.

Proficy Workflow enables an environment of information-rich, circumstance-based workflows that operators follow to understand what is happening around them and how to react in a sequenced and procedural manner that is repeatable every single day by every single operator.

With a work process management system, plant managers have the opportunity to improve quality, reduce operational costs and secure operations for a true sustainable advantage.

GE Fanuc recently introduced Proficy Workflow for water/wastewater, allowing operators to better understand the information at hand and take action, thus improving effectiveness by up to 15 per cent.

Proficy Workflow can connect to many existing databases in water and wastewater treatment plants - both GE Fanuc and third party - using Proficy Service Oriented Architecture (SOA).

This architecture connects to different databases and pulls information back into video, portal or HTML screens.

The software prompts operators for manual data entry, as needed, and the validated data becomes part of the facility's permanent databases.

Alan Hinchman, GE Fanuc Intelligent Platforms' global water industry manager, said: 'Sometimes having too much information is as bad as not having any information at all.

'In a water treatment plant, managers and operators need to filter through complex situations and sets of circumstances, managing the data from many sources and understanding what the next steps should be,' he added.