Creation of an alarm philosophy document is the cornerstone for development and sustainability of an effective alarm management program and the first stage in the ISA-18.2 alarm management lifecycle. The alarm philosophy document establishes the guidelines for how to address all aspects of alarm management at a site - including roles & responsibilities, rationalization, design, operations, maintenance, testing, training, and management of change. This webinar will discuss one successful methodology for creating a philosophy that minimizes the time and resource commitment of plant personnel. It will also review some of the key content that should be included and the typical decisions that must be made when creating the document.
exida Recorded Webinars
How to Create an Alarm Philosophy Document
Recording Date: July 2013
About the Presenter:
Todd Stauffer
Todd Stauffer, PE, is responsible for exida’s alarm management products and services (training, consulting, SILAlarm™ rationalization software). He has been an editor and voting member of the ISA-18.2 standards committee on alarm management since 2005. He was an active participant in the development / publication of the ISA-18.2 standard itself and as an editor / reviewer for ISA’s series of technical reports on alarm management (including ISA-18.2 TR1 “Alarm Philosophy” and TR3 “Basic Alarm Design” for which he served as co-chair). He is currently the co-chair of the joint working group developing ISA-84.91.03 “Functional Safety of Safety Controls, Alarms, and Interlocks for the Process Sector”. Todd is an instructor for ISA’s official training class on alarm management and is exida’s representative on the EEMUA 191 committee.
He has executed numerous alarm philosophy workshops, gap assessments, and alarm management training classes for different control system platforms. Todd developed exida’s alarm philosophy best practices template. He is also the product manager for the SILAlarm rationalization software tool. Todd is an industry thought leader in alarm management. He has published numerous articles and presented many papers at supplier user group and industry conferences. His presentations have garnered three “Best in Conference” nominations and his article “Don’t be Alarmed: Avoid Unplanned downtime from alarm overload“ was selected as Intech magazine’s best article of the year in 2007.