Carmeuse
Designing a SCADA for lime processing plants
Carmeuse is an international company producing lime products worldwide. Continuously investing in optimal and sustainable work processes, they aimed to set up a new control room for two of their lime processing plants in Slovakia, to make it fully remote.
Carmeuse wants to create an optimal working environment for operators, addressing both physical and cognitive needs. Thanks to our partnership with Symbio Concepts & Products sprl, we addressed both challenges. Namahn focused on the design of digital products (SCADA), while Symbio’s work revolved around improving the physical space. This control room was considered a pilot project and used as a reference for other Carmeuse control rooms worldwide.
| Client | Sector | LAnguage | Team |
|---|---|---|---|
| Carmeuse | Private company | English | Project manager, one visual designer and one designer |
Approach
The project included two main phases: the first involved exploring work environment of lime processing plants and the best practices of HMI design, while the second focused on designing the digital interfaces.
Research and exploration
The project started with an in-depth exploration of Carmeuse processes and it involved detailed field studies at plants in Slovakia and Belgium. After a framing workshop, the Namahn team conducted thorough on-site visits and interviews, during which we gained critical insights into the current SCADA system and the operational layout.
These findings, together with a comprehensive exploration of HMI best practices, informed the creation of the initial design system and the conceptual design. The results of this first phase and Symbio’s study of the physical set-up were the starting point of the second phase.
Creating the detailed design and expanding the design system
We organised the more design-oriented phase into focused sprints, which marked a constant collaboration with the client and occasionally with the operators. For each part of the application, the team followed a similar iterative process, which started with a briefing workshop to gather essential insights from stakeholders and continued with several client and user reviews to align with the scenarios of use. Thanks to this sprint-based collaborative approach, Namahn developed coherent and accurate screens and progressively expanded the design system, taking time to add and test new components. All screens underwent comprehensive usability tests with operators and managerial profiles, ensuring that our solutions resonated well with user needs.
The team started with developing the part of the software dedicated to managing kilns, the process of burning limestone to turn it into lime. Once the main functionality of the control software was approved, Namahn tackled the design of transportation processes before and after burning, as well as additional processings like hydration and milling.
Result
The outcome of these projects was the total re-design of the SCADA system, complete with a comprehensive HMI style guide, a scalable system and an improvement of the physical setup. These deliverables ensured consistency across applications and supported process controllers in optimising their workflow, even remotely. Our iterative approach, thorough documentation, and high-quality designs have allowed us to develop a new standard for Carmeuse control rooms worldwide.