A New Standard in Operator Performance Assessment
AI-driven scoring layered onto realistic process simulations to benchmark operator performance — stability, response time, awareness, and control discipline.
Why SymOpSys Labs
Realistic Process Dynamics
Simulations are built from first-principles-style behavior: level, temperature, pressure, and flow all interact the way operators expect in the field.
Decisions Under Pressure
Operators respond to alarms, trends, and changing process conditions in real time. Performance reflects not just the final outcome, but the path they took to get there.
Objective Performance Scoring
The platform tracks moves, timing, stability, and safety margins to generate an objective performance profile that goes beyond traditional multiple-choice testing.
AI Scoring Engine
Objective performance metrics that evaluate stability, alarm handling, move quality, situational awareness, and decision timing — far beyond legacy testing.
AI Scoring Metrics
The system evaluates the essentials — safety, production goals, and energy efficiency — and then applies AI scoring to reveal what legacy tests like COBRA can’t. It measures how operators stabilize the unit, prevent swings, diagnose developing issues, and prioritize under pressure. Instead of testing what someone remembers, it shows how they actually operate when the process starts to move.
Stability Profile
Tracks oscillation behavior, decay, and control discipline across key variables to show how the unit is actually being managed.
Alarm Handling
Measures time-to-acknowledge, time-to-action, and prioritization when alarms arrive in waves rather than one at a time.
Move Quality
Evaluates direction, magnitude, and frequency of corrective moves — rewarding interventions that stabilize rather than amplify swings.
Scenario Awareness
Assesses how well operators recognize developing deviations, interpret mismatches between variables, and prevent minor disturbances from escalating.
Controller Management
Tracks how operators use manual/auto, setpoint changes, and controller discipline to support stability instead of fighting the process.
Overall Performance Index
Combines safety, stability, timing, and decision quality into a single score that makes hiring and promotion decisions easier to defend.
How It Works
AI-driven performance assessments designed around how real operators think and react.
Modeled After Real Unit Ops
Every scenario is shaped by veteran operators who spent years watching real units breathe, drift, and fight back. Core variables behave the way plants actually behave, and the simulations are built to reflect real operating conditions instead of idealized textbook behavior.
What We Measure
Operators aren’t just evaluated on how they react — they’re assessed on how well they recognize developing deviations, interpret mismatches between variables, and prevent minor process disturbances from escalating.
The scoring engine measures anticipation, diagnostic accuracy, and the decisions that keep instability from becoming a larger operational problem, highlighting the people who strengthen safety and reliability.
Use Cases
Pre-Employment & Promotion Screening
Replace or augment legacy tests like COBRA with simulations that look and feel like a modern DCS. Evaluate situational awareness, prioritization, and stability — not just test-taking skill.
Training & Refreshers
Use the same environment to train new operators, run periodic refreshers, and explore rare-but-critical scenarios in a controlled, repeatable way.
Interested in early access?
SymOpSys Labs is actively developing the first production-ready unit-op scenarios. If you’re responsible for hiring, training, or supporting console operators, let’s talk.