Ring Operator Manual#

This is the day-to-day reference for operators and shift supervisors running the glue kitchen through Ring — the modern HMI (Ring.exe, window-titled "Ringwood RS3000") that replaced the legacy ~RS360 Borland application.

Who this is for#

Plant operators and shift supervisors on the floor at the LCP (Line Control PC — the touchscreen workstation). No programming knowledge assumed. The plant runs Ring in English (the legacy system it replaced was Dutch-language), and the app itself is localized if the floor ever wants otherwise — see 01-getting-started.md for how to switch it, including to Dutch (nl).

Note: Every screenshot in this manual was captured on a demo/training station. That is why each one carries the yellow demo banner and the teal read-only banner, and shows "Operator: not set" in the status strip. Your station's screens will look the same, minus those two banners, once demo mode is off and the plant's write-enabled cutover has happened.

How this relates to the Operator Training Runbook#

OPERATOR_TRAINING_RUNBOOK.md (source: in the Ring repository) is the authority on operator training and cutover-day procedure. It ships inside the app itself — Help → Operator Runbook, on the LCP, not via a link in this document — so it is what a new operator reads cover-to-cover during training and what the training team edits per plant.

This manual does not replace it. Where the runbook already walks through a procedure step-by-step, this manual summarizes and links to it instead of repeating it — the two are meant to stay in agreement. Use this manual as the thing you come back to during a shift when you need a quick answer about one screen or one indicator, without re-reading the whole training document.

If the two documents ever seem to disagree, treat the runbook as authoritative for procedure and this manual as the place to file a correction — the app's actual screens are the final word either way.

Before you read further: read-only vs. write-enabled#

Ring ships read-only. Every screen described here that talks about starting a batch, silencing an alarm, or changing a setpoint describes what happens once PLC writes are enabled. Until then, those same actions are validated on screen but nothing is sent to the controller — see 01-getting-started.md for how that shows up on screen (source for the full write-safety model: README.md "The safety model" in the Ring repository). The plant's write-enabled cutover is planned for 2026-09-08.

What changes when writes are enabled#

Read-only vs. write-enabled comes up in almost every chapter of this book. This table is the single place that says what actually looks different on your screens the morning writes are turned on — it is not exhaustive, only the changes operators have specifically asked about.

Chapters#

1. Getting started — starting the app, the main window, navigation, language, demo mode, telling Ring who you are, the PLC connection indicator, and the safety note that Ring is not a safety system.
2. Running batches — picking a formula, starting a batch, a worked start-to-finish example, watching it run, hold/resume/ reset, split batches, connection loss mid-batch, and how to stop a batch you didn't mean to start.
   • 2a. Your shift, start to finish — a start-of-shift checklist and an end-of-shift/handover checklist, pulled together from across the book.
3. Screens reference, in three parts — a detailed, card-by-card and control-by-control tour of every screen area:
   • 3. Dashboard
   • 3a. Main Screen — the eleven equipment screens (Make Ready Tank, Storage Tank Group, Use Tank Group, TVC, Live Process, Caustic and Borax, Receiving Hopper, Receiving Verification, Silo, Bulk Caustic Tank, Viscometer).
   • 3b. Use Tanks, Shifts, Setup and Help
4. Alarms and attention — where alarms appear, silencing vs. resolving, the first-response playbook, email alerts.
5. Formulas and recipes — viewing and editing formulas, amount limits, units, formula bank exchange with the PLC, and exactly when and why a formula-bank write is refused.
6. Reports and history — a "which report answers my question" lookup table, then every report under NavBar → Reports: what question it answers, its filters, its columns, and how to read the result.
7. Troubleshooting — a symptom-first lookup table with inline answers, then PLC connection lost, app crashed, degraded startup, falling back to the legacy app.
8. Glossary — TVC, LCP, doser/storage/mix tank, make-ready, CIP, golden batch, demo mode, read-only mode, heartbeat, and more.
9. Quick reference card — one printable page repeating every legend in this book (status pills, PLC dot, alarm glyphs, freshness chip, banners), the keyboard shortcuts, and a blank "who to call" block for this station.