David Strobhar is the founder and president of Beville Engineering.
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Articles by David A. Strobhar
Operator Training: When 'Safe' Is a Judgment Call
Operator Training: When 'Safe' Is a Judgment Call The deaths of 11 workers at a Washington paper mill show that human error isn't confined to the control room. An industry ombudsman could give dissenting voices a place to be heard. Paper in typewritter with words Humans Factors, and above it in red, Ombudsman Needed Safety is our top priority. We have all heard or seen that, perhaps in the basic safety video from the plant manager or on a poster somewhere in the plant.
Tasks to Activities: Rethinking the Process Operator's Future Role
Tasks to Activities: Rethinking the Process Operator's Future Role As AI and automation take over sensory and physical tasks, plant operators are shifting from solo task work to collaborative activities — and the judgment calls only humans can make. Key Highlights Automation is replacing many physical and sensory tasks traditionally performed by field operators, transforming their roles from task execution to activity coordination.
When Alarms Stop Warning and Start Failing
David Strobhar founded Beville Operator Performance Specialists in 1984. The company conducts human factors engineering analyses of plant modernization, operator workload, and alarm/display systems for BP, Phillips, Chevron, Shell and others. Strobhar was one of the founders of the Center for Operator Performance, a collaboration of operating companies, DCS suppliers and academia that researches human factors issues in process control.
Podcast: Perceptual Invariants: The Hidden Key to Operator Expertise
Experienced operators don't just know what to do — they know what to watch, regardless of how conditions change. That ability hinges on perceptual invariants: the critical relationships and variables that remain meaningful even as everything else shifts. Human factors engineer Dave Strobhar explains how identifying and reinforcing these invariants is the key to effective operator training.
Operator Training: One Grain of Rice Away from Calamity
David Strobhar founded Beville Operator Performance Specialists in 1984. The company conducts human factors engineering analyses of plant modernization, operator workload, and alarm/display systems for BP, Phillips, Chevron, Shell and others. Strobhar was one of the founders of the Center for Operator Performance, a collaboration of operating companies, DCS suppliers and academia that researches human factors issues in process control.
Human Factors Engineering: Designing Systems Around Our Limitations
Chernobyl, Bhopal, Three Mile Island, Deepwater Horizon, Texas City — What do they have in common? Human error or human factors were identified as contributing to the incidents. But what are these factors? The discipline of human factors engineering integrates human characteristics into the design of human-machine systems. It seeks to account for how people actually perceive information, make decisions and interact with technology, rather than how we assume they do. What makes us human?
Operator Training: Tap New Ways to Boil Down Experience
Unlike the movie “Field of Dreams, the “build it and they will come” approach doesn’t always work. Trainers may not use the tool effectively or even use it at all. I was about to have an operator explain his response to a momentary power failure. “What am I supposed to do?” he asked. I told him to just show me how he would handle the situation. His continued reluctance made me suspect he was unsure of what actions he was supposed to take.
You might have HMI design backward
David A. Strobhar, PE, is one of the founders of the Center for Operator Performance, and principal human factors engineer at Beville Engineering in Dayton, Ohio. Contact him at dstrobhar@beville.com. In this free, on-demand presentation, Strobhar takes you through the fundamentals of HMI design and answers commonly asked questions on content, layout and formatting, color coding, symbols and shapes and the importance of each factor for the machine designer.
You might have HMI design backward
David A. Strobhar, PE, is one of the founders of the Center for Operator Performance, and principal human factors engineer at Beville Engineering in Dayton, Ohio. Contact him at . I’ve heard many comments and discussions in the past few years regarding the color grey. Is that even a color? I’m not talking about the 50-shades-of variety. The use of a grey background on process graphics has become all the rage, or rage-inducing, depending upon with whom you are talking.
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