ROOT CAUSES OF ALARM SYSTEM PROBLEMS

• No plant-wide alarm philosophy
• Inadequate operator training
• Poorly designed operating displays
• Inadequate attention paid to plant practices and procedures
• Alarm limits specified at design and rarely revisited for validity during actual plant operating conditions
• DCS alarm system configuration contributes to over alarming
  • Because it seems to cost nothing, why not add an alarm?
• Alarms constantly added and rarely deleted
  • HAZOP's, small capital projects, known problem avoidance, etc., etc.

SYMPTOMS OF ALARM MANAGEMENT PROBLEMS

• Alarm activations occur without operator action.
• No plant-wide philosophy for the alarm system.
• No clear guidelines for when to add an alarm and how to do it.
• No practices for removing existing alarms.
• Operating procedures not tied to alarm activations.
• When alarms activate, the operator is not always sure what to do about them.
• Routine operations produce a large number of alarm activations that serve no useful purpose.
• When nothing is wrong, there are active alarms.
• Some alarms remain active for long periods of time.
• Minor operating upsets produce a significant number of alarm activations.
• Significant operating upsets, produce an unmanageable number of alarm activations.

• We will help you develop
  a sitewide alarm philosophy
• We provide tools to capture
  alarm data
• We do alarm assessment analyses of archive data
• We reduce the number
  of alarms and assign
  proper priority and trip point