PCS 7 Takes you Beyond the Limits of ...
Alarm Management
Alarm Management is becoming an Alarming Issue
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One of the most common causes of unplanned downtime is a failure to respond effectively during plant disturbances and process upsets.
With the proliferation of alarms and reduction in operating personnel, it is no wonder that alarm management is becoming such an important topic in the process industries. As shown by comparing the EEMUA recommendations with selected industry benchmarks, the average operator is being subjected to considerably more alarms (10X) than he/she can effectively process. |
Symptoms of Poor Alarm Management
If any of the following are TRUE for your plant, then you could benefit from implementing a new Alarm Management program:
• Are your operators complaining about too many alarms?
• Do operators ever ignore alarms?
• Do your operators know which alarms are most important?
• Do all your operators respond to alarms quickly and consistently?
• Do operators always know which alarms are disabled or “Out-of-Service”?
• Do they ever start up equipment with critical alarms unknowingly disabled?
• When an alarm occurs, can operators quickly navigate to the source of the problem?
• Do you ever have difficulty determining what went wrong when you do post-event analysis of an unplanned shutdown?
Alarm Management Capabilities in PCS 7 that help you address the most common "symptoms"
With the release of PCS 7 V7.0, Siemens has set a new industry standard for “out-of-the box” alarm management capabilities making it easier than ever for you to implement a proactive alarm management program, which can cure the most common symptoms.
Alarm suppression by tag or process area with a dedicated display showing all suppressed alarms
Ability to add operator comments to the historical alarm log
Ability to configure corrective actions and document operational best practices for online viewing by the operator
Navigate quickly and easily to the source of an alarm
Identify and correct “nuisance” alarms by analyzing a built-in alarm frequency display
Monitor performance to support a continuous improvement program (such as number of alarms active for > 24 hours)
State-based “smart” alarming
Alarm “Shelving”
Since all of these capabilities are integrated directly into PCS 7’s HMI and engineering system, it takes almost no time or effort to set it up. To fit “continuous improvement” into your busy schedule, access to all of the information is available at the touch of a button from any HMI console in the system.
PCS 7 has been designed to allow you to leverage industry best practices as well as to comply with the most important published standards, such as EEMUA Publication 191 and NAMUR NA 102, in addition to the ISA’s evolving standard SP18.02.