The experience gained in the development of an Operator Guidance
System (OGS) for on-line process control and fault diagnosis in a
commercial scale sintering process will be discussed in this paper. The
OGS development started with the specification of feasible control and
support tasks, eg ratio control scheme, mass balance calculations. Next,
minimum requirements for fault diagnosis and process control were
defined and the adequacy of existing instrumentation was assessed. The
OGS knowledge base consists of both quantitative and qualitative
diagnosis methods. Quantitative models based on fundamental
engineering principle are used first and any gaps in such quantitative
knowledge are then filled with heuristic rules. The diagnostic rules for
the knowledge base was developed based on the knowledge acquired
from experienced operators and operations engineers and validated with
plant data. A real time reasoning program was written using C language
and data base software. The OGS has a human-computer interface which
is the primary means of interaction between the OGS and process
operator. The OGS development has been successful in assisting
operators in decision-making in their routine tasks. Further enhancement
to the existing system is currently underway.