Developing a Human Machine Interface (HMI) for Industrial

Most industrial plants are automated without any operator-machine interaction. This makes it difficult for the operator to at a glance know the state of the machines and the immediate steps to undertake in order to clear any anomalies occurring in the plant. In this paper, consideration was given to the design of an HMI for an automated boiler plant which can be operated both manually and automatically by the press of start buttons. The design stages included screen interfacing for the HMI, flowchart development, programming the HMI by assigning tags, integration into Step 7 brand of PLC using ethernet, simulation of the program using “PLCSIM ” and the programming codes of the automated boiler plant. The system gives a real-time view of the industrial plant, gives reduction in the troubleshooting time for faults and assures of safety of operating personnel. The designed HMI will be useful to manufacturing industries having industrial automated systems