Alarming Services

Improving alarms at a facility can be a time-consuming process that does not yield an easily quantifiable return.  Capital spent on alarm improvement does not immediately show in metrics like throughput or efficiency.  As a result, management is reluctant to spend money on alarm improvement. Organizations need to see the value in safety, risk reduction and fewer unplanned outages that results from alarm improvements.   

Local Management must commit resources and bear liability for the alarm changes. They prefer to avoid costs and liability, focusing on reliable plant operation. Poor alarming practices are seen as maintaining the status quo.

Upper Management wants industry-leading alarming  practices because it lowers the risk of an event with economic, health, environmental or criminal consequences. 

The parties are misaligned when upper management expects local management to take on the cost and liability without support. This leads to slow progress and frustration. Alignment is achieved when the parties define an acceptable level of risk from their alarms and plan to achieve this goal.

It takes time to identify, approve and implement alarming changes and additional time to quantify improvements to alarming metrics.  The extended duration and intermittent nature of the work causes resources committed to the project to lose interest or to get allocated elsewhere. 

When operators receive too many alarms they resort to visually screening the alarms for ones they recognize as needing an action. Most alarms are dismissed by acknowledging and taking no action. This strategy breaks down when many unrecognized alarms appear, an alarm flood occurs, or an unexperienced operator takes control. In these cases, the operator can’t keep up and critical alarms are missed, situations are incorrectly diagnosed, and the wrong actions are taken. The result is an unplanned outage. Well designed alarms are manageable even under stressful abnormal conditions and help to prevent unplanned shutdowns.

Operators have 5 responsibilities ordered below by importance:

1. Keep the plant operating in a safe state
2. Make production targets
3. Operate efficiently (lowest cost per unit of product)
4. Assist with reliability and maintenance
5. Suggest ways to improve

Alarms play a key role in keeping the plant operating and safe. If operators spend most of their time
focusing on Responsibility #1 due to poorly managed alarms, they can't focus other responsibilities
that drive economic value.

Improving alarming metrics make the operator experience less stressful.  Having an hourly alarming rate of less than 12 alarms per hour means that the operator can correctly respond to each alarm. Reducing alarm flood events means the operator is less frequently on high alert trying to assess the process, determine what happened and decide on the correct response. This reduces operator stress; operator fatigue and operator turn over. 

Facilities can tell stakeholders such as employees, management, insurance providers and the surrounding public that they follow externally set standards for Alarm Management that are accepted as "good engineering practice". 

Management has peace of mind knowing they have taken the time and spent resources reduce the risk of negative environmental, safety or economic events. 

Every abnormal situation that ends in a negative event wasn’t caught by alarms. For this reason poor alarming practices contribute to industrial accidents but are often not the root cause. 

• Calculating alarming metrics using events data
• Comparing the results to recommended standards
• Reviewing site specific alarming practices (priorities, operating areas, shelving practices, annunciation)
• Reviewing common alarming issues (chattering, stale alarms, alarm floods, bad actors)
• Exploring ways to address alarming issues 

While an assessment on it's own will not improve concerning metrics, it is an essential first step towards addressing the issues.

A Lakeside engineer, specializing in Alarm System Management, collaborates with the facility to implement various aspects of the Alarm Management Lifecycle. This work can be guided by any of the recognized alarming standards, such as ISA 18.2, EEMUA 191, or IEC 62682. The scope and pace of the project can be customized to align with the facility's resources.

For sites lacking a robust alarming program, the process may begin with an Alarm Assessment and the development of an Alarm Philosophy. This can progress to a trial Rationalization for a specific unit or area. Other partial implementations might include establishing audit procedures to ensure the alarms in the Master Alarm Database match the control system configuration or assisting in the development of tools to calculate alarming metrics.

This consulting service involves a Lakeside engineer providing expert advice and working closely with facility personnel.

• Performance Analytics: Provides pre-built and customizable reports for monitoring alarm performance.
• Database: Stores the Master Alarm Database, tracks changes, and allows audits by comparing DCS alarms to the database.
• Dynamics: Enables dynamic or state-based alarming, ensuring alarms are relevant to the current process state.
• Alarm Shelving: Offers advanced shelving capabilities to reduce stale and nuisance alarms, auto re-enable alarms, and create shelved lists for different users.