Machine Builder, Northern Europe

HMI Replacement and Screen Redesign

An obsolete text panel replaced with a modern HMI — and the alarm text rewritten so operators can find the fault without calling maintenance.

Challenge

The original operator panel was obsolete and increasingly unreliable. Its alarm messages were numeric codes that had to be looked up in a paper manual, so nearly every stop became a call to the maintenance team regardless of how trivial the cause was.

Solution

A modern HMI with a redesigned screen structure and, more importantly, a rewritten alarm system: every alarm names the device, the expected condition and the timeout, in the operator's own language.

Result

Most stops are now cleared by the operator without escalation. The multi-language text library means the same machine ships to three countries without a screen redesign.

Engineering Work

HMI Programming
Screen Design
Alarm Management
Multi-Language Text Library
PLC Program Modification

The PLC program needed changes too — the original alarms were single bits with no context, so the timeouts and expected positions had to be exposed before the HMI could display anything useful.

Alarm text was drafted with the operators rather than for them. Several messages were reworded after the first week on the basis that the people reading them at 2 a.m. know best what they need to see.