Overview
Having effective operators in a process plant is critical to maximizing production efficiency, product quality, and plant reliability. During a single shift , operators make numerous decisions that affect plant profitability. These include actions to avoid unplanned upsets or to mitigate events that could lead to plant outages. A well-designed and highly-functional alarm system can add to the operator’s decision-making ability.
An effective alarm management program can deliverable quantifiable business benefits in the following areas:
- Reduction in unplanned downtime (lost production)
- Increased operator productivity
- Reduction in avoidable maintenance of process equipment
- Production optimization / debottlenecking / increased throughput
- Capital savings for SIL requirement reductions (improved safety)
- Reduced environmental / regulatory incidents
- Energy savings
What Makes an Effective Alarm Management Program?
We at exida will work with you to craft a program that is tailored to your requirements, complies with industry standards and guidelines on alarm management (e.g., EEMUA 191, ISA-18.2), improves operational performance, and is sustainable over the long term.
It typically consists of the following steps:
1. Benchmark Alarm System Performance
2. Development of an Alarm Philosophy Document
3. Alarm Rationalization
4. Advanced Alarm Design (e.g., dynamic alarming)
5. Implementation of Rationalization results and creation of Alarm Response Procedures
6. Alarm System Performance Monitoring & Assessment
7. Auditing Alarm System Practices and Procedures
Services
Overview
Establish and document the standards for how your site or company will do alarm management (prioritization, HMI design, testing, training, alarm suppression, management of change, establish performance benchmarks).
Alarm Philosophy
An alarm philosophy document (APD) is the cornerstone for development and sustainability of an effective alarm management program. It establishes the guidelines for how to address all aspects of alarm management.
Alarm Rationalization
Alarm rationalization (aka documentation and rationalization) is the process of reviewing and justifying alarms to ensure that they meet the criteria for being an alarm as defined in an alarm philosophy document.
Software
Alarm Rationalization Made Easy with SILAlarm
SILAlarm™ is a tool for facilitating and documenting the results of alarm rationalization in a master alarm database for both new (greenfield) and existing (brownfield) systems. It was developed in accordance with the ISA-18.2 standard “Management of Alarm Systems for the Process Industries” and EEMUA 191.
Training
We offer a range of Alarm Management training courses for professionals in the process industry, from basic to advanced concepts. We also offer customized training options available upon request.
Students benefit from exida’s in-depth knowledge and expertise, enabling them to fully understand ISA-18.2 and implement procedures in their organizations to ensure that Functional Safety is maintained.
ALM 102 - Fundamentals of Alarm Management for the Practitioner: How to Apply ISA-18.2 / IEC 62682
The course is structured around the the alarm management lifecycle; reviewing the key requirements / activities of each stage along with industry best practices. It focuses in-depth on the engineering, design, implementation, and operational and improvement tasks that would be led by the practitioner; rationalization, basic alarm design, HMI design, dynamic alarming, designed alarm suppression, alarm shelving, implementation of alarm response procedures, evaluation of alarm system performance, and use of alarms as process safety safeguards and layers of protection. Human factors principles are introduced to show how they impact effective operator performance. Exercises are designed to demonstrate key principles applied in real situations. “Lessons learned” are shared from numerous successful alarm management projects around the world and from being an “insider” during the development of the standards.
ALM 241 - Alarm Rationalization with SILAlarm
Attendees will learn how to conduct alarm rationalization of greenfield (new) or brownfield (existing) applications in order to optimize performance of their alarm systems. The class immerses participants in discussion and hands on exercises which have been designed to demonstrate the best practices and requirements for rationalization as taken from the ISA-18.2 alarm management standard and EEMUA 191 guideline. The class focuses on how rationalization can lead to improved operator performance by eliminating / preventing common alarm problems such as nuisance / chattering / stale alarms, incorrect priority, alarm overload, and alarm floods. It also includes a discussion on tips and tricks for creating an alarm philosophy document, such as how to effectively define the “rules” for rationalization. Exercises will use exida’s SILAlarm rationalization tool.