Coming from the nuclear Navy, I soon found that paper logs weren't all the rave on the outside.
While working as a Plant Utility Operator at Amgen, the largest biotech drug company in the world, we used what I thought was a pretty slick system. Every piece of equipment had a barcode sticker on it, which we scanned with a portable barcode reader on it. Then, we had to type in the readings for parameters on that particular skid or system. All the gauge numbers, etc. would display on the screen, so basically a newbie could do the logs learn the process systems at the same time by walking down all the measurements.
After typing things in, and going through the entire plant, we would stick the thing in a cradle in the control room and download the data into a database application.
I can't for the life of me remember the name of the manufacturer, but the scanning system was rock solid, never with any problems. The unit was a generic barcode reader, not something built for a plant environment. It was the same brand as the popular inventory barcode/data entry unit you might see a stocker at a department or grocery store using.
The database system was developed in-house, and it was what we had problems with. System parameters that fed into our SCADA and BMS systems were logged electronically straight from the SCADA/BMS. Only a small number of readings from the plant were duplicated between the manual rounds and the SCADA recordings.
-Jassen
