Alarm classification is a process for grouping alarms that have a common set of requirements for areas like training, maintenance, testing, management of change, and reporting. It could, for example be used to identify Safety (Related) alarms that are used for functional safety purposes. Classification is also a required output of alarm rationalization per the ISA-18.2 and IEC 62682 alarm management standards. Despite this, many alarm management projects ignore classification or misinterpret what it is to be used for (it’s not the same as alarm priority or alarm type). Additionally the usage and benefit of Highly Managed Alarms (HMA) is not well understood.
This presentation will review the purpose of alarm classification, how to define alarm classes, and how to assign alarms to classes. It will also discuss the origin and purpose of Highly Managed Alarms, and their associated requirements. Lastly it will present application examples of classification (including “Safety Alarms”) and the benefits that can be realized by end users.
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.