Sometimes, you really can have too much of a good thing.
Everyone knows effective alarms are critical to running a safe, efficient plant. In recent years, digitalization has leveled the playing field on alarms. With modern control systems, alarms are easier and faster to create than ever before. Whenever something goes wrong, a user can quickly create an alarm to make sure they know immediately if that issue ever arises again.
For the most part, this ability to create alarms more easily is a good thing. However, as Dustin Beebe explains in his recent article in Chemical Engineering magazine, it can also create problems if not managed properly.
“The ease with which users can add alarms often leads to an overwhelmingly complex array of different alarms, which in turn complicates and confuses operators both as they run the plant, and when they try to manage the alarms in the system. Users can often create, propagate, and change alarms faster than documentation can keep up.”
When alarms become alarm floods, operations are put in serious jeopardy. To avoid that risk, today’s most effective operations teams are employing alarm management. However, not all alarm management solutions are equally effective. Complex and cumbersome solutions often lead teams to start alarm management projects, but never finish. To avoid this risk, Dustin recommends operations teams are careful in their selection of alarm management tools, opting for solutions explicitly designed to reduce the time and effort of configuring and maintaining alarm management.
The realities of rationalization
Traditional alarm rationalization was performed with spreadsheets, and could take months. One might assume that having software solutions available to cut out the manual work would dramatically reduce time spent, but, as Dustin explains, that isn’t always the case,
“Many alarm management solutions require users to perform all rationalization offline, and then apply changes manually. Doing so is time consuming, complex, prone to error, and makes change management difficult to implement and follow. As a result, today most alarm management projects fail not because the team did not complete rationalization, but because once they finish, they have so many changes to manually enter into the control system that they never complete the job.”
The best modern alarm management software solutions, like Emerson’s DeltaV™ AgileOps Alarm Management, are seamlessly integrated as part of a boundless automation vision for increased data mobility, to make it easier to implement changes. With AgileOps, alarm changes are made online, eliminating the complexity and hassle of manually transferring changes to the control system.
Once adjustments are complete, users simply click a button, and all changes are applied to the control system.
Manage changing states more effectively
Further complicating alarm management is the fact that operating states change frequently. If an asset is shut down for maintenance, traditional alarm management solutions will not know the difference between that and a failure. Operators will continue to receive alarms that will distract the operator, then disappear into the many pages of alarms generated by other assets. This can be frustrating for operators, but, as Dustin explains, when it comes to startup, it moves from irritating to dangerous,
“During startup, operators are putting mass and energy into the process and hoping that this is occurring within specification. However, [an] alarm that was activated [during a] shut down (potentially several weeks ago) is still a standing alarm and is now valid because the operator has moved the process into an operational state. As far as the control system is concerned, it has notified the operator, even though that notification came a long time ago and may be on page 20 of the alarm screen. The system does not know the alarm was not valid before, so it will not re-alert the operator. Operators are required to maintain an incredibly high level of vigilance to track such aberrations across extended time periods, and mistakes are far more likely to occur.”
Dynamic alarm management—like that available in DeltaV AgileOps—helps eliminate the alarms that occur when operational states change. Dynamic alarming takes changing process states into account, and only delivers alarms when they are needed, helping improve visibility and increase safety.
Dustin shares more insights into modern alarm management in the full article over at Chemical Engineering, including some insight into the ways AI will change the landscape of alarm management. You can check out the full article to learn more.
