exida explains Blog

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…

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The March / April 2020 issue of Intech contains an excellent article by Nick Sands and Donald Dunn, the co-chairs for the ISA-18 committee. 

The article reviews some of the most frequently asked questions on alarm management:

1. What is alarm management?
2. Which alarm management standard do…

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Creating an alarm philosophy document is often the entry point into the ISA-18.2/IEC 62682 alarm management lifecycle. Many tasked with developing one are discouraged by its length and the barriers it creates. When it comes to using the philosophy document, a common concern is that if the…

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From an operations point of view, one of the significant parts of the ISA-18.2 and IEC 62682 alarm management standards is the endorsement of alarm response procedures. An alarm response procedure, otherwise known as “Alarm Help” or “Alarm Response Manual”, is defined as guidance for response to an alarm (e.g., operator…

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One of the more important tasks in the alarm management lifecycle is auditing of the alarm system configuration. Auditing preserves your investment in rationalization, checks for changes that bypassed the MOC process, and helps you to maintain the integrity of the alarm system. Oh, and it also required per…

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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…

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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…

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“Who should participate in alarm rationalization?” 

It finally happened. Alarm management problems at the plant led to an incident and now management wants action. You have “volunteered” to put together a staffing plan to execute alarm rationalization. You have heard it can be a resource-intensive process, so you want…

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2013 was a good year for functional safety progress.  exida Certification issued a record number of new product functional safety certifications in mostly every product category - valves, actuators, solenoid valves, PLCs, fire and gas sensors, process sensors, and components.  The component category is one of the most…

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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…

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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…

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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,…

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The increasing global adoption of alarm management standards (ISA-18.2 and IEC 62682) is bringing the importance of alarm rationalization to the forefront. Rationalization is defined as the “process to review potential alarms using the principles of the alarm philosophy, to select alarms for design, and to document the rationale…

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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)…

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The alarm system is a daily encounter for most operations across different industries. For oil and gas, the alarm system alerts and reminds the operation to take action(s) to revert the process back to the normal operating range. For pharmaceuticals and batch operations, the alarm system can be used…

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As many of you will know, one of the most common form of nuisance to operators working industrial controls are repeating or chattering alarms. On a typical plant, repeating alarms may account for around 50% of the alarm annunciations. They are a problem because the operator will have to…

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