Throughout history, total solar eclipses have been a significant event. In primitive societies, eclipses were viewed with fear or as important omens. In the US, the upcoming “Great American Solar Eclipse” is creating much excitement. From buying “official” eclipse-viewing glasses, to paying $1500 or more…
Todd Stauffer, Director of Alarm Management at exida, takes you through a key part of the Alarm Rationalization process called Alarm Objective Analysis (AOA).
You will learn how to determine what alarms you need (and which one’s you don’t), how to eliminate nuisance alarms, and safely reduce the number…
As discussed in What do Nuisance Alarms, the 80-20 Rule, and Mental Models Have in Common?, there are typically a handful of alarm points (10 to 20) that create the majority of notifications (50-80%) to the operator (referencing the 80-20 rule). These nuisance alarms are affectionately called “bad…
US Chemical Safety Board cites lack of Alarm Philosophy, Alarm Rationalization, and State-Based Alarming as Contributing Factors to Blowout in Oklahoma
On January 22, 2018, a blowout and rig fire at the Pryor Trust gas well killed five workers, who were inside the…
As the name implies, the purpose of Safe Operating Limits (SOL) is to define the limits beyond which a process will not intentionally be operated and at which troubleshooting ceases, replaced by pre-determined actions to bring the process to a safe state. Pretty important information. I am sure this is…
Situation: There are three operator consoles (positions) in the same control room. There is one general alarm horn that goes off whenever a new alarm comes in from any one of the three consoles. The horn draws the attention of each of the three operators.
Question: How are the…
Contrary to what you might have guessed, the “Defeat of the Situation Awareness Demons” is not a new video game on XBOX or Playstation. It is a set of eight (8) factors which undermine effective Situation Awareness. It can be applied to operators in process plants to characterize human…
Industry Benchmark Survey on Alarms as Safeguards and Independent Protection Layers (IPLs)
exida recently conducted an industry benchmark survey on the practices for the use of alarms as safeguards and IPLs. With over 200 safety practitioners from around the world providing responses, you can use the survey findings to…
Which one of these layers of protection (operator response to alarm, relief valves, dikes, and safety instrumented systems) is not like the other?
Operator response to alarm (Operator Intervention), because of the “Human” factor.
It is very difficult to calculate the probability…
The new and updated version of the ISA-18.2 standard (ANSI/ISA-18.2-2016, Management of Alarm Systems for the Process Industries) has now been officially released. This supersedes the original edition (2009). The new version incorporates feedback from 6+ years in the "field" and includes some updates based on the IEC 62682…
The purpose of an alarm is pretty straightforward - to draw the operator’s attention to an abnormal situation that requires action in order to prevent an undesired consequence. Alarms that don’t meet this principle often become nuisance alarms. A nuisance alarm is defined as:
“an alarm that annunciates excessively,…
Alarms were originally shown on Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams / Drawings (P&IDs) to document hardware requirements for installation in a (panelboard) control room. This was important because there was limited real estate in the control room for the alarms (displayed on Panalarms and light boxes) and there was a…
Recently I was reading The Manufacturing Operations Technology Viewpoints blog and came across an interest post on Alarm Management that cites exida’s Alarm Management cheat sheet. The blog post entitled The Crossroads of Alarm Management and Process Safety is a great summary for any one…
I recall the first time I was called an “expert.” I thought that sounded nice. I spotted a magazine article on safety and thought “I do not have to read that as I am an expert.” I quickly recovered. The real problem with being called an expert is that…
Most everyone has heard of the “80-20 rule”. It asserts that for many situations, roughly 80% of the effects (outcomes) come from 20% of the causes (inputs). This rule was first proposed in the early 1900s by Vilfredo Pareto, who was an Italian engineer, sociologist, economist, political scientist, philosopher,…
The ISA-18.2 and IEC 62682 standards define an alarm as an “audible and/or visible means of indicating to the operator an equipment malfunction, process deviation, or abnormal condition requiring a timely response”. One of the reasons why alarm systems are out of control (alarm overload, nuisance alarms)…
We are going to continue discussing the results from exida’s recently published industry benchmark survey on the practices for the use of alarms as safeguards and IPLs. Over 200 safety practitioners from around the world provided responses. This entry will discuss the relationship between alarms identified as safeguards and…