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
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