A MANUAL ENTRY ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEM DESIGNED TO HELP REDUCE OPERATOR ERRORS

At the Savannah River Plant, the separations areas are not equipped with automated accountability systems, therefore accountability is performed manually. The accountability personnel must gather material transfer and physical inventory data, compute values, maintain and adjust the books, and prepare the necessary reports. Errors can be introduced at any one of these steps. Several years ago, the Computer Systems Engineering group was requested to develop a computerized accountability system for the separations areas that would rely on manual entry and perform the necessary computations; adjust and maintain the books, and generate the necessary reports. In addition, the system would provide a complete audit trail and help reduce operator errors. Since the separations areas are actually divided into several material balance areas, the Computer Systems Engineering group was faced with several detailed specifications. Rather than designing a computerized accountability system for each material balance area, they designed a generic system that each area could tailor to its process. The system helps in reducing operator errors by displaying simply data entry forms, performing data validations when possible, providing field help, performing all computations, and generating the necessary reports. Many validation tables are user configurable, as well as the equations for computing transfer and inventory values.