Too much information can be a bad thing, especially when it comes in the form of hundreds of alarms bombarding the control room. Considering that operators can’t adequately respond to that many alarms and notifications going off at once, problems—all too often—go unnoticed. As time goes on, they can fester to the point that they degrade quality, damage equipment, or even injure people.
Recognizing the negative ramifications of receiving too many alarms, industries have been talking—for the last decade or two—about alarm-management programs. In an attempt to reduce control room clutter, many automation professionals have begun to eliminate nuisance alarms and consolidate those that are repetitive. Some have gone so far as to find ways to prevent alarms through continuous improvement in process control.
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“For some, reducing alarms to zero has become the ultimate goal of alarm management,” notes Tyron Vardy, product director for alarm-management solutions atHoneywell Process Solutions。
Goals like these may sound great, but how frequently are they successful? Is industry really adopting the best practices necessary for managing all those alarms? Looking for answers to these questions,Automation Worldasked users of alarm technology for their observations in an informal, unscientific survey, and also sought the perspective of vendors.
让我们的读者自由地说话，调查是匿名的。收集的唯一数据是他们公司和相应行业的规模。答复来自小型，中型和大公司。其中一半来自加工行业的化学品，石油和公用事业 - 四分之一来自离散的制造 - 如汽车，航空航天，机械和设备 - 以及杂交工业的药品和食品和食品和食品和饮料的15％。剩下的九个百分之九是顾问和其他专业人士。
该调查产生了一些令人鼓舞的结果，特别是与a的结果相比surveyAutomation Worldinitially conducted seven years ago。In the earlier survey, nearly 70 percent of respondents said alarm overloads affected their ability to operate their processes properly. Yet only 50 percent indicated that they were not following any best practices for alarm management. However, based on the current survey, the situation seems slightly better: More than 60 percent say that overloads are causing problems, though—compared to the last survey—more users are implementing best practices. For example, almost 3/4 of the respondents indicated that their companies have been taking steps to limit the number of alarms that they are tracking.
Investments in software
Another sign that more industrial facilities are adopting best practices for alarm management is an investment in the necessary software. Although, nearly 20 percent of respondents are using alarm-management software more than 10 years old, over half have updated their software within the past five years.
关于过去五年的软件收购的一个有趣事实是44％是人机界面（HMI）或监督控制和数据采集（SCADA）升级的一部分。这种连接可能是由于几个原因。根据产品管理主任John Krajewski的说法，第一个是感知问题Aveva。“Even if the alarm logic is in the controller, operations teams most commonly interact with those alarms in their HMI and SCADA applications,” says Krajewski. “Because that is often the place where people see alarms, that is generally what they consider to be their alarm system.”
He, and others, point to a desire to benefit from the latest in information technology as another reason that many users see alarm management as part of an HMI upgrade. These users want to benefit from the connectivity made possible by mobile devices, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), and ever-increasing digitalization.
Consider a tank-overflow alarm built directly into the control application. “When users build the control module to handle that tank overflow, they build the alarm instruction or tag condition,” says Michael Anthony, product manager for controls and visualization atRockwell Automation。“警报,没有任何工程d的人机界面esign engineer, is consumed by built-in software within the HMI. From there, that alarm history can be ingested into a data lake for orchestration with other analytics.” The result is greater real-time visibility that can drive decisions and behaviors.
As part of their investment in alarm software upgrades, 29% of the respondents indicate they are making use of a related best practice: the use of simple grayscale screens that reserve color and flashing icons for drawing attention to abnormalities. This technology is often referred to as high-performance HMI.
虽然在负面灯中的HMI升级的这个方面看着调查结果可能很诱人（随着大多数用户未使用先进的HMI技术），Krajewski受到鼓励，这是近三分之一的受访者迁移灰度HMI。“由于其现有系统的惯性，”用户解释说：“由于惯性，”用户解释道。““如果一个组织有1,000人在其运营团队中，这意味着1,000人已经知道现有系统如何工作以及颜色的意思。证明重新发作解决方案的费用和努力，改变所有这些系统，并恢复所有人都很难。“因此，一些用户选择通过在慢慢计量时轻松进入技术，因为它们进行修改并添加新屏幕。
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A matter of priorities
Another important best practice being adopted is the use of software to prioritize alarms. About 65% of all respondents report that their alarm systems clearly differentiate critical alarms from those of a lower priority.
Even so, vendors find it worrisome that almost one third say their alarm systems still treat all notifications equally and rely on the operator to decide which to prioritize. This practice can be dangerous, especially in situations when the operators receive a lot of alarms. “Operators become accustomed to just ignoring things on the screen,” explains Anthony. “When a chemical vent is blocked, and a pressure alarm is flashing with the same priority as a panel door alarm, the building pressure can be missed. That can lead an explosion.”
Automation vendors suspect that software does not assign priority because the necessary information was lacking at the configuration stage. “There is no practical methodology for prioritization, and these users don’t have the manpower to determine priorities,” says Dr. Hiroaki Tanaka, manager of the Advanced Solutions Division atYokogawa Electric Corporation。“Software can only import a determined alarm database that includes alarm prioritization.”
Though an HMI can ultimately help in monitoring alarm systems, issues can manifest if parameters are not set. “A systems integrator building an HMI is often simply given a functional specification, and no key operational data for knowing which alarms are important and which are not,” adds Krajewski. “So, the integrator just turns on all the alarms and gives them equal status, leaving the development of a priority hierarchy for later.” In too many cases, the hierarchy is left for the operators to discover.
The missing component here is an alarm-management philosophy for establishing alarms and reacting to them appropriately. Although half of the respondents reported having such a philosophy, their responses suggest that this best practice may not be well entrenched. Only 34% say that employees follow it all of the time. While 52% say that the document is followed most of the time, 14% admit to following it only some of the time.
This laxity over creating and following an alarm philosophy may be, in part, a vestige of simpler days when there were fewer alarms to track. “When many systems were installed initially, the primary alarm response was a single alarm or warning indicator,” recounts Ramey Miller, HMI product manager atSiemens。“In turn, there was no need for a philosophy.” The complexity of today’s systems has changed things, however. “An alarm-management philosophy is now a necessity,” Miller adds.
Priorities for an orderly plan
实际上，开发警报策略应该是任何警报管理程序的第一步。它应该在使用软件到组警报之前，优先考虑它们，并识别不良演员。根据Vardy，从软件开始肯定会提供一些快速的胜利，但只有到目前为止，只有在没有明确的策略的情况下才能拿走你。“使用该软件来提供计划，而不是让软件驱动您对警报管理的方式推动，”他说，添加第三步可以是警报合理化或边界管理。“有些人会争辩说，合理化应该是下一步，但我认为第三步应该真正依靠警报系统的状态，”Vardy说。“如果你有很多爆炸性的警报，那么你必须在做合理化之前清理它们。限制警报，然后在剩下的内容下进行合理化。没有合理化所有这些警报的意义。“
Half of the survey respondents admit that their companies have not implemented safeguards against control-system adjustments, which could cause a process to drift from its rationalized state. “Often, the time needed to do the rationalization work isn’t prioritized,” explains Rockwell’s Anthony. He recommends taking the necessary time because, once you discover that a process has drifted from a set point, the work to ensure that your product still meets quality-control specifications can be enormous.
Rationalization is linked to yet another best practice, namely operator involvement. After all, the operators are the ones who work with the system every day. “One objective for alarm rationalization is to reflect operator knowledge into the alarm database, knowledge such as possible root cause and corrective action,” says Tanaka.
Automation vendors also advocate for giving operators a role in developing the company’s alarm philosophy and specifying the software. “Today’s systems can have hundreds of physical sensors and many more logically programmed alarms,” says Miller. “The task of categorizing and prioritizing them is typically easier when development engineers, management, and operators all work together to creating the alarm philosophy.” Right now, about 55% of all respondents say that operators help with alarm management and system specification.
To keep alarm-management programs on track and to help users stay current on best practices, Vardy suggests lifecycle management as the fifth and final step. “It’s just a matter of making sure people don’t stray from the program.
