Alarm Management Services

Many facilities show signs of poor alarm management. These rob operations of efficiency and productivity, while making it difficult to run at peak performance. They also have a significant impact on the effectiveness of your operators, whose job is to respond to alarms quickly and accurately.

Exida can analyze your system and recommend the changes necessary to eliminate existing issues and improve performance..

Exercise - Check the Health of Your Alarm Management System

Review the list of alarm management symptoms and check which symptoms are present in your facility.
Symptoms
Alarms are sometimes ignored by the operator.
When alarms occur, operators don’t always know what action should be taken.
Operators are hit with a high number of alarms even during steady state operating conditions ( > 2 per 10 minute period on average).
The alarm display is full of alarms, even when there is nothing wrong.
Some alarms are present on the alarm display continuously for long periods of time (> 24 hours).
During an upset, operators are flooded with a large number of alarms (> 10 alarms in the 10 minute period following the upset).
Alarm settings (e.g. alarm limit) are changed from one operator to the next without a review and authorization process.
Operators sometimes “miss” alarms.
Some alarms in the system do not require a response from the operator.
There is no record or listing of which alarms are disabled / suppressed.
Alarms appear for equipment that is not operational (e.g. a redundant pump that is off).
Alarms are displayed to the operator in situations when they are not relevant (e.g. compressor temperature and pressure alarms when the compressor trips).
Some alarms repeatedly transition between the alarm state and the normal state in a short period of time (e.g. 3 times in 1 minute).
Operators don’t know which alarms are really the highest priority because too many alarms are classified as high priority (> 10 %).
A handful of tags (10 – 20) generate the majority of all alarms (> 50%).
Number of Symptoms:  
≤ 2: On the verge of Operational Excellence
3 – 5: Functional alarm system that can be improved
> 6 : You are ready for an alarm management improvement program
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