Shift Log Book — a Paradigm Shift

In my recent assignments with some of the refining companies and chemical process plants as an Industry 4.0 assessor, I came across discussions on digitizing the shift log books. The discussion revolved around the following limitations of a paper based manual shift log books.

• Manual shift log books are not standardized, as every operator write down the log books in their own way.
• Many times, accidents happen due to errors in communication during the shift handover.
• Instructions are often going unnoticed or followed even after their period of applicability.
• It is difficult to retrieve information from the manual shift log books, when incidents happen.
• It is time consuming to consolidate manual log sheets when required.
• It is tedious to search of an event or comment from the manual log books.
• It is laborious to maintain the paper based log books over a period of time.
• It is time consuming and expensive to modify and reprint the shift log book, when there is a need.

The discussions took me down the memory lane. When I was a refinery operator way back in the eighties, the shift log books used to be just plain notebooks, wherein we just write down the activities that had happened in the shift in our own free format in the notebooks. Some of us write down just two lines like “Everything Normal”. Some of us write the status of the plant conditions and the status of maintenance activities in a succinct manner. Few of us write down long stories, like a student who always asks for additional sheets in the exams.

The status of the plant would also be passed on to the incoming shift crew in an oral manner by the outgoing shift crew. Since the incoming crew were comfortable in the informal shift handovers, the shift log books were never taken very seriously. The shift handover is not limited to the shift operators alone. It was applicable for shift supervisors as well for shift superintendents or shift managers.

Way back in the nineties, organizations were considering standards like ISO 9000. At this point of time, our company too thought of standardizing the shift log books. Suggestions were pouring from many operators and engineers to design standard templates and for every process units and portfolio. For example, for the Hydrogen manufacturing plant, all the rotating equipment like pumps and compressors would be listed down in one segment of the log book. Against each equipment, parameters like suction pressure, discharge pressure, bearing temperature, cooling water flow, abnormal noise etc would be printed. All the operators had to do was to just jot down their responses as tick marks or selecting one of the options printed in the log book. Except in the remarks column, they cannot write down any long comments or essays. Same approach was used for designing the printed log books for shift supervisors and shift managers. These printed shift log books helped us to standardize the reporting process for the shift handover.

Though lot of unwanted entries and lengthy comments were minimized in the printed log books, still they continued to have the same limitations of data retrieval, archiving, integrating with other systems etc.

In twenties computerization started penetrating in every segments of the industry and many workflows were automated. This is where the manual “Work Orders” were automated and gave birth to “Computerized Maintenance Management System (CMMS). Slowly over a period of time, the CMMS started accommodating several modules and finally evolved into the Enterprise Asset Management System (EAM). In this context, I was also thinking about the transformation journey of the Shift Log Books. Like the CMMS, the manual shift log book too has undergone a paradigm shift and evolved into a Digital Log Book system in the last few years. This was primarily possible with the advent of industry-approved mobile devices and the rugged tablets.

In the past decade, many companies have started coming out with their own initiative of bringing out a digital shift log book system with the help of their internal IT resources. But in the long run, they seemed to be counterproductive, as the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) went up. Instead of developing an inhouse bespoke application, now many companies are considering market available solutions and customizing them. Some of the renowned market available solutions for the digital shift log book are as follows:-

• DynAMO from Honeywell consolidates information from different sources to provide a consistent and up-to-date view of key process data, problems, operating plans and the shift log.
• eLogBook from Yokogawa is a computer-based replacement for traditional control room paper-based log books. It enables the capture of observed and non-automated data within the control room and throughout the plant.
• inSis Digital Operations Logbook from Jaaji Technologies is an Indian product that comes with several features revolving around the digitization of operations logbooks and safe shift handover. They have the cost advantage over other products.
• j5 Operations Logbook from Hexagon allows operations teams to record, manage and view any event in a consistent and efficient way, with both web browsers and mobile devices.

Benefits of Digital Log Books

• The entries in digital log books are standardised and there is less communication gap during the shift handover. Less incidents happen due to reduction in errors in communication.
• All observations are stored in the system which can be searched, retrieved at any point of time. Required info can be retrieved at a click of a button.
• Integration with other systems like DCS/LIMS/ERP/Tank-farm System helps to improve the real-time visibility across the organization.
• Flexibility in re-designing the layouts at any point of time.
• Ease of entering plant data from the field by the field operators through mobile devices
• Ability to synthesize and analyze the data in multiple formats and come out with exotic visualizations.

While doing a analysis of several digital logbook solutions, the following thoughts emerged in mind. If product vendors attempt to throw light on the following, it would be much appreciated.

• Can the digital log book solutions offered by the vendors meet the expectations for different end-users say, plant operators, shift supervisors and shift managers?
• For the mobile module of the solution, what are the options available for the customers to choose the rugged device?
• Are the vendors having an alliance with the supplier of the industry approved mobile devices and the rugged tablets, so that the customer can see the vendor as an one-stop-solution provider?
• Are these solutions offered as cloud based solutions, so that customer need not bother about the hardware, software license, database admin etc?
• Since some of the vendors are hard core process automation solutions (DCS/SCADA) providers, do they have priority and bandwidth to focus and support solutions like Digital Logbook?
• I also feel that some of the digital logbook solution have overwhelming features like integration with DCS/LIMST etc, which may not be expected by the customer in the first go. A customer who is looking for just automating the shift handover process in a phased project may get confused with all the features. Hence my humble suggestion is that the vendors can have a two pronged approach in positioning their solutions. i.e Come out with a vanilla solution with essential features in the first instance which can be consumed by the customer in the short span of time. May be in the second phase, all the other additional features can be offered.

In the last few decades, the shift handing over process and the shift log system have undergone a paradigm shift. This digital transformation would no doubt assure productivity improvement, reduction in incidents, visibility of operations to the continuous process industries like petroleum refineries. petro-chemical plants, fertilizer units, power plants and chemical manufacturing plants.