加拿大安大略省的Nova Chemicals的Corunna遗址是一家炼油厂和石化综合体，可提供加拿大对石化总量总需求的30％至40％。该公司最初购买了Emerson Process Management的AMS Device Manager软件，以在1999年在其控制系统中管理100个标签。多年来，AMS管理的标签数量增加到4,000。根据Nova Chemicals的仪器/电气可靠性负责人拉尔夫·惠特尼（Ralph Whitney）的说法，此标签计数将很快增加到5,000。
Recounting Nova’s progressive use of the AMS Device Manager, Whitney says the project started with the Rosemount 848T temperature transmitter connected to DeltaV via Foundation Fieldbus to AMS Device Manager to diagnose thermocouple issues and increase the reliability of a key compressor. In 2005, AMS was integrated with the plant’s DCS via a HART multiplexer. That’s when the tag count really exploded—and so did the alerts.
“We wanted AMS to deal with all the nuisance alarms operators had to deal with when the system was expanded to 3,000 tags,” said Whitney, who added that you have to set alerts on devices correctly to mitigate this issue. “You can't just turn them on in default mode or you’ll be overloaded with alarms.”
Emerson Process Management Implementation Services helped Nova Chemicals address the abundance of alarms using AMS to categorize the alarms A, B, C and D alarms range from “critical and requiring intervention” to information-only alerts.
“每个设备在AMS中都有自己的模板，我们选择每种设备需要使用哪些警报，” NOVA Chemicals的Emerson Process Management Services提供商Blair Fraser为湖畔过程控制的生命周期服务专家Blair Fraser说。
Before Nova Chemicals addressed the issue, the 3,000 devices on the system were creating 20,000 alerts. “With AMS Device Manager, we now just monitor around 50 alerts from these 3,000 devices,” said Whitney. “We narrowed it down to just get notifications on alerts that can cause failure, and that require a technician’s response.”
Whitney added that, beyond alarm management, AMS has been critical to Nova Chemicals’ plant turnaround planning and execution process because it can “tell us what instruments or valves need attention. The alert monitor in AMS is used to identify devices that need repair,” he said.
“作为最近周转的一部分，我们扫描了阀门签名，并确定84个中有84个不需要拆除。这节省了107,000美元，”惠特尼说。“我们过去常常将所有阀门淘汰，以评估每五年的周转过程的一部分。”
除了由AMS阀评估提供的工时和直接成本节省之外，Nova Chemicals还使用AMS设备管理器验证和模拟信号到其DC和PLC，对导向的波浪雷达设备进行故障排除，并验证互锁上的温度变速器故障。
