ing documents including the Engineering Stages and activities

Equipment and Materials Users’ Asso- Stage Title Activities

ciation (EEMUA) standard 191 “Alarm Define process for alarm management and alarm system
Systems: A Guide to Design, Manage- A Philosophy
requirements specification
ment and Procurement.” The Internation- B Identification Determine potential alarms
al Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)
C Rationalization Rationalization, classification, prioritization, and doicumentation
is using ISA-18.2 as the basis for inter-
D Detailed design Basic alarm design, HMI design, and advanced alarming design
national alarm management standard
IEC-62682. E Implementation Install alarms, intial testing, and initial training
F Operation Operator responds to alarms refresher training
Role of alarms G Maintenance Maintenance repair and replacement, and periodic testing
ISA-18.2 defines an alarm as “An Monitoring and
audible and/or visible means of indicating H
assessment
Monitoring alarm data and report performance
to the operator an equipment malfunction, Management of Process to authorize additions, modifications, and
I
process deviation, or abnormal condi- change deletions of alarms
tion requiring a response.” This means an J Audit Periodic audit of alarm management processes
alarm is more than a message or an event,
as it indicates a condition demanding Figure 2: Activities associated with the stages in the ISA18.2 lifecycle model of alarm
quick operator action. management are shown.
Ideally, each alarm will provide the
operator with related information such
as priority, possible root cause, and a rec- Task 1: Optimizing system design
ommend response procedure. The opera- This task encompasses lifecycle model
tor can then respond to the alarm quickly stages A through E: philosophy, identifi-
and effectively. Limiting alarms, priori- cation, rationalization, detailed design,
tizing alarms, and providing alarms with and implementation. When properly exe-
necessary related information can reduce cuted, this task supports the design of an
the chance that an operator will delay alarm system that prevents alarm flood-
response, or even ignore the alarm. ing and other undesirable alarm system
occurrences. It also provides operators
What is alarm management? with the information they need to take
Alarm management is the proper proper action when alarms occur.
implementation of documentation, design, An important activity within this Figure 3: This alarm summary window
usage, and maintenance procedures to task is to specify the causes of current is an effective tool for displaying alarms
construct an effective alarm system. nuisance alarms and to eliminate these to operators in a manner allowing quick
ISA18.2 defines the processes and proce- alarms, or at least greatly reduce their fre- and comprehensive response.
dures required to create an effective alarm quency. This is an essential step toward
management system. Figure 1 shows the reducing alarm flooding. In many cases, Task 2: Advanced operator support
ISA18.2 lifecycle model of alarm man- alarms can be reclassified as events to be This task encompasses lifecycle model
agement. This model can be applied to a recorded by the automation system for stages F and G: operation and mainte-
new or an existing alarm system. later review, instead of as items requiring nance. A tool in implementing this task is
As shown in Figure 2, stage activities immediate operator attention. the creation of alarm summary windows
logically follow one another, and correct Once the total number of alarms has in the automation system (see Figure 3).
completion of all activities will result in been reduced as much as possible, the Modern automation systems will include
a properly designed and effectively oper- next step is to prioritize the remaining the functionality to create these windows
ating alarm management system. The alarms. Prioritization can be quite com- in the process and its alarms.
lifecycle model also includes stages for plex, as it requires plant personnel to An alarm summary window typically
ongoing maintenance, essential for sus- identify possible abnormal operating con- displays the list of currently active alarms.
taining effective operation. ditions, list the alarms that might occur With most automation systems, the alarm
The 10 stages in the lifecycle model for each condition, and then prioritize summary window will provide sort, fil-
can be roughly categorized into four gen- these alarms. After alarms are reduced ter, shelving, and other functions to help
eral tasks. To perform these tasks, it’s and prioritized, then recommended oper- improve display of information to the
essential that a process plant create a ator actions for each alarm can be created. operators. These functions can be used to
cross-functional team that includes all rel- Performing these and other steps as prevent higher priority alarms from being
evant plant functional areas including, but listed in the lifecycle model stages A overlooked by operators.
not limited to, management, engineering, through E will result in the creation of an Each alarm will require some type of
safety, operations, and maintenance. effective alarm system. response from the operator. Advanced
 inside process

alarm summary windows display what Practical limits to human capabilities

sequence of actions should be performed Very likely to be acceptable Maximum manageable
by the operator in response to particular
~150 alarms per day ~300 alarms per day
alarms (see Figure 4). An effective meth-
od for displaying these actions is a flow ~6 alarms per hour (average) ~12 alarms per hour (average)
chart, which can be used to guide the ~1 alarm per 10 minutes (average) ~2 alarms per 10 minutes (average)
operator through the response sequence.
A flow chart can be very effective Figure 5: This chart lists recommended alarm frequencies for an alarm system in
because it can contain if/then instructions, accordance with ISA 18.2.
guiding operators to take different actions
depending on how the process responds ator response time, and specific operation alarm-related data typically contained in
to operator actions and other conditions. actions. This data can be used to improve an alarm master database.
the alarm system, and to provide more For example, alarm system design
effective operator training. parameters can be compared with actual
It is often useful to evaluate alarm sys- alarm system performance figures. When
tem data from several viewpoints. For significant discrepancies exist, then cor-
instance, the number of alarms in each rective action can be recommended. Rec-
area and the number of hourly alarms ommended corrective actions can then be
are both important data points, and can reviewed and implemented as required
be evaluated separately or together. By using a comprehensive change manage-
using these kinds of data, the conditions ment procedure.
in which operator errors frequently occur
Figure 4: This advanced alarm sum- can be specified, and these results can be Alarm management entry points
mary window uses a flow chart to display used to improve operator response. For most alarm systems, there are
what sequence of actions should be per- Modern automation systems pro- three typical entry or starting points for
formed by the operator in response to a vide tools for creating reports, and these creating an alarm management system.
particular alarm. reports can be particularly useful for eval- Referring to the ISA 18.2 lifecycle model,
uating alarm system performance (see these points are: a) philosophy, h) moni-
Figure 6). Modern automation systems toring and assessment, or j) audit.
Task 3: Performance evaluation can be configured to collect a host of data For new process plants, philosophy
This task models stage H, monitor- concerning alarm system performance. is the preferred point of entry. For exist-
ing and assessment, to evaluate the per- This data can be presented to plant per- ing plants, either monitoring and assess-
formance of the existing alarm system. sonnel in a variety of formats from sim- ment or audit is preferred using recent
In ISA18.2, key performance indicators ple KPIs to charts and graphs. Using this plant operating data. Actions are then
(KPIs) are suggested as a useful tool to information, alarm system performance taken based on the evaluation. This
perform the activities in this stage. An can be evaluated and improved. course retains effective existing practic-
example KPI would be the number of Task 4: Continuous improvement es while pinpointing areas that require
alarms within a fixed time of the opera- This task encompasses lifecycle model improvement.
tion. As shown in Figure 5, ISA 18.2 lists stages I and J, management of change and For new plants, the lifecycle model
the very likely to be acceptable and max- audit. Continuous alarm system improve- should be followed in its entirety, starting
imum manageable number of alarms for ment is supported by performing uniform with task 1, ensuring that all necessary
various time periods. management of the enormous amount of steps are taken to implement an effective
The alarm system will provide alarm management system.
a host of data to help evaluate Proper alarm management is indis-
performance including, but not pensable for achieving safe and secure
limited to, alarm frequency, oper- process plant operation. The approach
to alarm management standardized by
ISA18.2 was introduced and explained
in this article, and then summarized
into four general tasks. Following this
approach will result in an optimal alarm
management system that prevents minor
alarms and upsets from escalating into
serious incidents. ce
Figure 6: These types of reports can be very effective tools for evaluating alarm sys- Marcus Tennant is principal systems
tem performance. architect for Yokogawa.

Posted with permission from the September 2013 issue of Control Engineering ® www.csemag.com. Copyright 2013, CFE Media. All rights reserved.
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