Large numbers of alarms with little or no contextual increase the risks of missed alarms and potential plant damage or personal injury.
Alarm management is one of the most important yet most undervalued and overlooked aspects of industrial operations. Studies show that more than $20B is lost annually due to unscheduled downtime, and 40% of these losses are linked to preventable human errors. It has been observed in various research studies that human performance contributes to 70-80% of all abnormal situations at industrial plants.
The key factors
responsible for human errors are:
- Nuisance alarms that mask critical alarms
- Alarm floods during plant upsets
- Operator’s inability to respond in time, especially during abnormal situations
- Lack of insight into alarms, plant processes and equipment damage
I am
happy to share the new Alarm Management infographics that our team at
Wonderware (Schneider Electric Software) created. This infographics has some interesting
information about common alarm management challenges, signs of poor alarm
management system, and top alarm management priorities for control room
operators, engineers and facility managers.
Effective alarm
management is the key to a plant’s safety, productivity and profitability. And
to achieve
operational excellence, it is very important to understand and use Situational
Awareness concepts in combination with alarm analysis software such as Wonderware Alarm Adviser and HMI/SCADA software solutions
like Wonderware InTouch and System Platform.
Did
you know?
- The ANSI/ISA-18.2-2009 Standard defines ‘Alarm Flood’ as a condition during which the alarm rate is greater than the operator can effectively manage, e.g. 10 or more predictive alarms in any 10 minute period per operator. Alarm floods have been identified as one of the major contributing factors in a number of industrial incidents.
- The EEMUA guidelines suggest that there should be no more than 30 shelved alarms in an efficient industrial facility at any given time.
- EEMUA recommends no more than 10 standing alarms for facilities during steady state operations.
Read the post
to learn about the top nine indicators of poorly designed alarm system and
ineffective alarm management, and identify the ones that are present in your
facility.
Maintaining
a Well-functioning Alarm System
Situational Awareness cannot be successful without a proper alarm management strategy. Without an efficient alarm management system, it is basically like tying a horse behind a cart and it really has no purpose.
The management
of alarms, design, runtime, and analysis can be an enormous task. This process is
also ongoing; not a task that is executed only one time. Though this ongoing
process can appear tedious, ultimately it will result in more stable operations
with higher throughput. What’s more, operators can be freed to focus on other
more productive activities. At Schneider Electric, our approach to alarm
management begins with a thorough analysis of the current situation,
implementation of the system, and alarm system philosophy. These activities are
ongoing activities; monthly/weekly activities are required to act upon report
data, and to execute improvement plans such as eliminating bad actors,
implementing state-based alarm suppression, and/or adjusting alarm limit
settings.
Here is
a graphical representation of high-level annual and monthly operations activity
plans. This is a modified version of a typical alarm management life cycle,
which shows where exactly Wonderware software fits in.
Are nuisance alarms
affecting your operators’ effectiveness? Learn how to manage your alarms
better!
More Information:
- Wonderware System Platform – Real-time SCADA and operations management unifying people, information and processes
- Wonderware Alarm Adviser – Transforming alarm data into actionable insights
- Wonderware InTouch – Visualize, control and optimize your operations
No comments:
Post a Comment