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: Todd Stauffer
- 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
- Thursday, March 17, 2022
- Alarm Management
Alarm Rationalization by the Numbers
“How much time does alarm rationalization take?”
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 plan to execute alarm rationalization. You need to create a defendable estimate of how long rationalization will…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, August 01, 2013
- Alarm Management
Alarm Rationalization: Alarm Objective Analysis (AOA)
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…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, February 04, 2021
- Alarm Management
Alarm Rationalization: An Art or a Science? – Common Rationalization Mistakes
Successful alarm rationalization combines both art and science. From the scientific point of view, rationalization follows a systematic process that applies alarm management principles to determine whether an alarm is justified (needed) and to document its basis (cause, consequence, corrective action, time to respond) and settings (priority, setpoint) 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
- 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 Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, February 20, 2020
- Functional Safety
Bow Ties Part I: Great for Formal Occasions and for Risk Management
The bow tie methodology, originally developed by ICI in the late 1970’s, has seen increasing industry adoption over the last 20 years. Bow tie diagrams build on the “Swiss Cheese Model” of hazard escalation and causation popularized by James Reason. They provide a powerful means for visualizing how a…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Tuesday, March 24, 2020
- Alarm Management
Bow Ties Part II: Do Bow Ties have a place in Alarm Management?
As discussed in Part I, bow tie diagrams provide an easy-to-understand visual representation of risk management information (hazards, potential consequences, barriers, degradation factors and controls). In this article we examine the applicability of bow ties to alarm management.
According to the CCPS book “Bow Ties in Risk Management”,…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, July 08, 2021
- Functional Safety
Can Checklists Prevent Human Error?
In the book “The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right”, Atul Gawande, surgeon and best-selling author, tackles the problem of how to prevent human error in an age where 
professionals grapple with the increasing complexity of their responsibilities. Errors,…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Tuesday, October 26, 2021
- Alarm Management
Can Nuisance Alarms “Break” the Operator?
Study after study finds that something like 80% of industrial incidents (give or take) are caused by Human Error. Incidents involving human error often include a failure of the operator to respond to an alarm, which is often directly or indirectly caused by nuisance alarms. Poor alarm management has…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, December 19, 2019
- Alarm Management
CSB Cites Lack of Alarm Management as Contributing Factors to Blowout in Oklahoma
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…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Tuesday, December 03, 2019
- Alarm Management
Delivering Situation Awareness During an Alarm Flood: Throw Your Operators a Lifeline
Alarm floods are periods of alarm activity during which the alarm rate is greater than the operator can effectively manage (e.g., when the operator receives ≥10 alarms in 10 minutes). During a flood situation awareness is compromised and alarms are likely to be missed. In the eleven minutes prior to the explosion…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, April 25, 2019
- Alarm Management
Don’t Let Your Safe Operating Limits Leave You S-O-L (Out of Luck)
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…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, November 14, 2019
- Alarm Management
Evaluating Alarm System Performance in a Multi-Operator Control Room
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…
- 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
- Tuesday, May 19, 2020
- Industrial Cybersecurity
Grasping the Power of the (Stuxnet) Virus (or What I did during the COVID-19 Pandemic)
The travel and group meeting restrictions from COVID-19 have allowed me to catch up on some reading about viruses; not the type that get transmitted to humans. This article is about the Stuxnet virus and what I learned from the book “Countdown to Zero Day: Stuxnet and the Launch of…
