Attendees will learn how to conduct alarm rationalization of greenfield (new) or brownfield (existing) applications in order to optimize performance of their alarm systems. The class immerses participants in discussion and hands on exercises which have been designed to demonstrate the best practices and requirements for rationalization as taken from the ISA-18.2 alarm management standard and EEMUA 191 guideline. The class focuses on how rationalization can lead to improved operator performance by eliminating / preventing common alarm problems such as nuisance / chattering / stale alarms, incorrect priority, alarm overload, and alarm floods. It also includes a discussion on tips and tricks for creating an alarm philosophy document, such as how to effectively define the “rules” for rationalization. Exercises will use exida’s SILalarm™ rationalization tool.
Focus on Addressing Common Alarm Management Issues
- Reduce the number of alarms presented to the operator (to only those that are necessary)
- Suppress alarms when they are not meaningful (when equipment is out-of-service)
- Eliminate nuisance alarms (chattering alarms, stale / standing alarms)
- Eliminate frequently occurring alarms / “bad actors”
- Ensure that operators know how to respond to each alarm
- Improve the speed and consistency of operator response to alarm
What Attendees Will Learn:
- Rationalization guidelines that should be defined in an alarm philosophy
- Information that is needed to create a Master Alarm Database
- Transferring alarm configuration settings to / from a control system
- Criteria for determining when an alarm is valid and necessary
- Prioritizing alarms based on potential consequences and time to respond
- Alarm classification: how to do it and what to use the results for establishing alarm limits and evaluating operator response time
- Creating operator alarm response procedures from the results of rationalization
- Applying deadband and on / off delay to eliminate chattering alarms
- Configuring alarm shelving to allow operators to temporarily suppress alarms
- Use of state-based (static) suppression, alarm flood (dynamic) suppression, and state-based alarming to ensure alarms are relevant and meaningful when presented to the operator
- Techniques for treating system / instrument diagnostic alarms (e.g. PV BAD alarms) and alerts
- Benchmarking alarm system performance to identify rationalization goals / targets
- Implementing management of change (MOC) for the Master Alarm Database
- Techniques for managing / ensuring a successful rationalization project
Who Should Attend:
Those responsible for leading/facilitating alarm rationalization, maintaining the master alarm database, and configuring the control system based on the results of rationalization.
What the Course Includes:
- Course Manual
- Two (2) weeks of online access to SILalarm™ after the class
Course Length: 2 Days