Who We Are

The Center for Operator Performance is a diverse group of industry, vendor, and academia representatives addressing human capabilities and limitations with research, collaboration, and human factors engineering.

Our mission to raise the performance level of our operators and improve Health, Safety, and Environmental effectiveness is accomplished through:

  • Openly sharing knowledge and ideas
  • Including vendors in research decisions
  • Teaming with leading human factors researchers and universities
  • Collaborating with a focus on HS&E

We understand the operational realities that operating safely requires redundancy of many components and operating competitively requires lack of redundancy of the human component. These complexities keep plant operators at the center of improving operational performance and at the center of our efforts bringing research insights into process plants.

All current employees of member companies are encouraged to sign-up and suggest research topics and participate in our current work.

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Sign up or Log in if you are already registered.

Companies who can join the Center for Operator Performance include refineries, chemical plants, pipelines, power plants, mills and suppliers. The Center is operating company driven, with research chosen for and by the operating companies. We invite you to become a participating member.

Explore

Since 2007, the Center for Operator Performance has been investigating how to improve operator performance in process control industries through manipulation of operator-system variables: Alarms, Graphics, Automation, Procedures, Workstation, Skills/Knowledge, Training, Workload, Job Design, and Organization. Download one of our ready-to-use Tools, or, if you want more background, visit Projects to review our comprehensive research library.

Get Involved

The more involved our members are, the more we all benefit. Join us at our next event to learn, promote a project, and network.

News

The COP Member Meeting will be held on April 29 - May 1, 2025, in San Antonio, TX/Hybrid.  

The October Teleconference will be held on Wednesday, October 16 at 11am - 12pm ET.

Looking to get more involved in the COP? Being a volunteer organization, we rely on all of you to provide leadership and oversight to the COP. Please submit (or resubmit) your nomination (or self-nomination) COP Governance Nomination/Volunteer Form.

Welcome to the NEW Center for Operator Performance website!  This much anticipated upgrade will help members find and use the tools that have been developed over 17 years of COP-funded research.  Take a look around, spend some time and enjoy!  This is an ongoing project, so please let us know if there are any improvements you’d like to see, by completing the following form: COP Website Feedback.

The Center for Operator Performance will be hosting an informational booth at YNOW2024, the Yokogawa users conference in Houston, TX October 28th-30th.  Additionally, COP’s very own Dave Strobhar will be presenting a workshop about Human Factors in Control System / Display System Design, a topic near and dear to our hearts.  Visit https://www.ynowlive.com to learn more.