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…
exida explains Blog
Entries tagged with: IEC 62682
- by Todd Stauffer
- Friday, August 18, 2017
- Alarm Management
Alarm Management and the Great American Solar Eclipse
- by Todd Stauffer
- Tuesday, December 08, 2020
- Alarm Management
Alarm Management Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
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:
- What is alarm management?
- Which alarm management standard do…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, November 06, 2014
- Alarm Management
Alarm Management Goes Global with the Release of IEC 62682!
The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has just published the first edition of IEC 62682 “Management of alarm systems for the process industries,” a global standard on alarm management. This new global standard was developed based on the ANSI/ISA-18.2 standard of the same name, which was published in…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Tuesday, January 21, 2020
- Alarm Management
Alarm Response Procedures: More than Just a Good Idea
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…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, August 09, 2018
- Alarm Management
Alarm Shelving - Relieve the Symptoms of Nuisance Alarms and Create a Peaceful Control Room
In an ideal world, every alarm in a process control system would indicate a malfunction or abnormal condition that required operator action. In the real world, alarms that are irrelevant or annunciate excessively—otherwise known as nuisance alarms—can pop up occasionally to quite frequently. They pose a risk to the…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Tuesday, October 06, 2020
- Alarm Management
Alarm System Auditing and Enforcement – The Why and the How
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…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, October 25, 2018
- Alarm Management
Bad Actor Knockdown: The “Whac-A-Mole” of Alarm Management?
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…
- by Dave Gunter
- Thursday, July 06, 2017
- Industrial Cybersecurity
exida Cyber Blog Series 04 - Cybersecurity Metrics, Diagnostics, and Alarms: What’s What?
Co-written by Todd Stauffer, Director of Alarm Management Services at exida
A wise man once said, “You can’t manage what you don’t measure.” Let's apply this to the world of cybersecurity to discuss the importance of cybersecurity metrics and how they are different from a cyber diagnostic and a…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, March 03, 2022
- Alarm Management
Four Ways to Pick a Winning Alarm Rationalization Team
“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…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, January 14, 2021
- Alarm Management
Rationalize Your Alarm Management Problems Away
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…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, July 18, 2019
- Alarm Management
When is an Alarm not an Alarm?
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)…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Tuesday, April 14, 2020
- Alarm Management
Which Measure (Rationalized or Annunciated) is More Important?
Get your priorities (distribution) straight
A very common question is posed during alarm management training. Does the recommended alarm priority distribution of ~5% / ~15% / ~80% for high / medium / low priority alarms apply to the rationalized alarm priority distribution (as configured in the control system) or to the annunciatedalarm priority distribution…
- by Paul Chan, CFSP
- Thursday, January 26, 2023
- Alarm Management
Why Data Science Knowledge is Required in Alarm Management
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…