Integrated witb botb vfiualization and advanced document retrieval, tbfi novel approach fi being h o m t r a t e d in Germany he supervision of highly automated industrial plants, of the kind to be found in manufacturing, chemical processing, and power generation, is already highly centralized. But pressures both economic and ecological are building for improved, more powerful supervisory and control systems. The task is daunting, but can be accomplished by a system that integrates two new technologiesvisualization and multimedia-and encourages collaboration among operators with different specialties.At present, there is a growing gap between those overseeing automated processes and the processes themselves, a growing inflow of data, and a growing specialization of activity that precludes a grip on the big picture. The level of production and product quality are increasingiy becoming the operators' responsibility-they establish setpoints in line with production goals and then monitor and, in case of deviations, troubleshoot, but seldom is there an opportunity to inter-A vene manually in the plant's operation. The information they need for decision-making is gathered from a multitude of sources by the central control room, from which thousands of measurements and, in turn, hundreds of actuators in the plant can often be manipulated. Yet the control room is frequently a clean, air-conditioned place sealed off from the sights, sounds, smells, and other sensations produced by the plant or by the process.Moreover, all these plants require a certain level of specialization-in process control, in maintenance, and in production planning-and the specialties are often divided among operator staff handling different parts of the process in different places. The "runners" may be in the plant, operators in the control room, and other staff members in offices.The power plant is the specific focus of a prototype supervisory control and data acquisition (Scada) system that integrates multimedia and visualization. Intended for a coal-fired power plant, the prototype was developed in 1992 by researchers at ABB Corporate Research in Heidelberg, together with practitioners at ABB Power Plant Control in Mannheim, Germany. The prototype equips a control room with wall-sized screens and the operators with a mouse for use on a window-based interface. Other features are new forms of visualization of process information, access to hypermedia documentation, interactive video facilities, and videoconferencing [ Fig. 11. Special attention has been paid to the seamless integration of functions and to ease of navigating among the varied forms of informaultimedia: information Hypermedia: multimedia tural information that links to make it possible to from a word to a dra problem component. represents the process t 44 0018-9235/94/$4.0001994 IEEE A tion and varied media that are used.The goal of ABBs work in this area is to lighten the operators' workload and simplify the cognitive demands made on them, and hence increase the availability, econom...