Operators Overwhelmed by Too Many Alarms?

The Problem

Alarms are a mechanism to protect lives and process equipment. Their function is to draw attention to an adverse situation so that a human can intervene and bring about corrective action.

Every plant alarm is an indication of the potential for money to be lost or that plant conditions may be endangering lives.

The Consequence

Operating a plant outside of its designed parameters and within alarm thresholds results in plants being stressed, leading to product wastage, increased equipment wear, higher maintenance budgets, and unwanted production stoppages. Equipment replacement will be more frequent in the long term.

When volumes of alarms are high, the chance of operators missing critical alarms is increased. In worst-case scenarios, this could result in an explosion or fatality.

When confronted with this situation, we often witness operator fatigue setting in, with operators blindly acknowledging and silencing alarms.

The Cause

It is not uncommon for our engineers to find many control loops set in manual mode to stabilize parts of processes and, hence, eliminate nuisance alarms.

Management of changes to alarm settings within the control systems also leaves a lot to be desired – plants that we designed and commissioned safely may no longer be running in a safe mode.

The main reasons for too many alarms at one time are:

x       Limited alarm prioritization or suppression strategies – all alarms are treated equally by the control system. In times of crisis, the operator cannot discern which alarms to focus on.

x       Poorly designed plant philosophies and control strategies, leading to alarm limits being frequently breached.

x       Poorly tuned control loops, resulting in wide process swings that breach high and low alarm limits.

x       Alarm limits not set properly.

x       Faulty field devices generate a constant stream of alarms.

The Solution

Alarm analysis tools that collect and collate alarm and event data from plant historians can use the data to:

✓       Plot performance against international benchmarks.

✓       Isolate the causes of alarm floods.

✓       Isolate the causes of internal DCS/PLC diagnostic alarms.

✓       Determine which alarms are suitable for a dynamic alarm strategy.

✓       Determine what is affecting operator performance, from alarm volumes to control loop instabilities and process design inadequacies.

This then allows the updating of alarm philosophies, standard operating procedures, etc., for the safe operation of the plant.

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