What is Alarm Management and Why is it Important?

 The Purpose of Alarm Management

Alarm Management defines the line between a process's normal and pathological states. Alarms provide a layer of protection against dangerous scenarios by alerting operators to take remedial action to restore the process/control loop to normal conditions.

Corrective actions typically relied on human involvement and are thus constrained by factors like operator knowledge, training and standard operating procedures. This corrective action must be conducted within a particular time frame to avoid process disruptions or endangering the plant's or personnel's safety.

Automated process safety systems (SIS/ESD) are the final line of defence. These safety systems are programmed to operate without the need for human interaction. As part of a standard process control system, alarms are issued for operators to take action; however, if the process cannot be restored to normal operating conditions, the process safety system automatically takes the next action to prevent a hazardous event from occurring.



Problems of Alarm System

●       Nuisance Alarms

Indicates an abnormal situation when none occurs or when process conditions do not change as a result of such generated alarms to operators. Over time, these warnings drive operators to adopt a nonchalant attitude and desensitise them. Instrument-generated alarms in normal operating conditions are a good illustration.

Nuisance alarms should be checked and addressed as soon as possible; nuisance alarm reduction is a continual process that should be continued until a stable, steady-state operation is attained.

●       Operator Response

Operators must have a clear understanding of what response is necessary for every alarm in order for assets to operate effectively. As a result, operators must be well-trained in all types of alerts and the actions that must be taken, as well as provided with necessary information such as Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).

●       Stale Alarms

Alarms that have been activated for longer than 24 hours are considered stale. These could be alarms that don't require a response or alarms that did once require a response but are no longer required. These alarms clog up the alarm summary and make the operator unresponsive.

●       Frequent Alarms

A sign of impending failure that should prompt you to maintain your equipment before it breaks down. If the warnings are occurring too frequently, immediate care is required. If alarms are set wrongly, the settings may need to be reevaluated.

●       Alarm Flood

Alarm floods are a spike in the number of alerts generated in a short period of time, usually caused by an event such as a process disturbance that floods the system and overwhelms the operator. Floods obscure the operator's capacity to respond correctly to crucial or important warnings by obscuring the decision-making process.

Alarm floods are determined by the number of alarms received in a certain time span divided by a threshold. Alarm floods are one of the more challenging issues to tackle and reach a definitive conclusion on. To resolve such challenges, an effective Alarm Management Service should offer an accurate timestamp of events within the context of the process hierarchy.

This is especially true for control loops that are more sophisticated and cascaded. The primary goal of alarm rationalisation is to decrease superfluous alarms while also providing tools to quickly determine the fundamental cause and take action in any situation. During the alarm rationalisation process, however, it is a good idea to avoid and eliminate alarm duplication.

●       Disabled/Suppressed/Shelved Alarms

Preventing the operator from being notified of the alert.

●       Variable Table/Master Alarm Data

These are usually tabular (Excel) and list all of the potential process alarms, along with their potential implications, repercussions and suggested Operator replies.

A competent Alarm Management service system can show where the problems are, what the problems are caused by and provide the operator with enough information to make the best decision possible.

Why is Alarm Management Service important?

There's a strong urge to raise an alarm for any possible departure, even if it doesn't require immediate attention. This approach, known as alarm flooding, can trigger a large number of alarms at the same time in the event of a serious disaster. When this happens, operators may be unable to identify and respond to critical alarms, causing the problem to increase in severity.

Alarm flooding, in the worst-case scenario, can result in significant environmental damage, productivity loss, injury or even death of plant staff. Alarm system administration is critical for dealing with alarm flooding and other associated concerns.

An Alarm Management Service or system will identify alarm issues and recommend solutions. The argument for implementing an Alarm Management System can be found in the prevention of a single unplanned shutdown.

An effective management system should include capabilities for analysing all of this data, from high-level data extraction to event-by-event analysis to determine the underlying reason. It should make alarm maintenance easier for everyone, from simple systems to complicated alarm management systems.

  • Data that can be customised for many places and plants
  • Data reporting to determine top alarms, priority distribution, alarm rates, and so on, using current data infrastructure
  • Alignment with the ISA TR 18.2 standard for alarm management
  • Combine operator logs, notifications, analysis data and alarms into a single, searchable log.
  • A chronological log of plant occurrences with process data correlation
  • Full-featured search
  • Grouping of alarms
  • Post-event analyses
  • Data from the process should be compared to the alarms that are linked with it.
  • A quick and painless rollout without client-side deployment
  • Fully customizable
  • Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) should be integrated into documents.
  • Add comments, operator responses, likely causes, and so on.
  • Document the result of the deviation.
  • Suggested remedial action or SOPs
  • Integrate with existing maintenance systems

To know more or hire the best alarm management services, industry experts like Sarom Global can be your best option. Apart from alarm management and maintenance they also offer the best engineering consulting services to all large scale industries and production plants at a competitive remuneration.

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