Management system optimises process alarms

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team Aug 17, 2004

AAASuite is a comprehensive alarm management system that optimises and enhances process alarms issued by control systems.

fAAASuite is a comprehensive alarm management system that optimises and enhances process alarms issued by control systems.

AAASuite improves operator performance by providing timely notification of only necessary alarms, thereby preventing alarm "flooding" and allowing safe, stable, and cost-effective plant operations.

AAASuite automatically detects typical nuisance alarms and notifies both the alarm causes and the required corrective measures to operators.

Typical nuisance alarms such as repeating high/low alarms caused by improper alarm settings and chattering high/low alarms caused by improper PID parameter settings can be detected.

As an added option, AAASuite can store the optimal alarm settings and automatically download the required settings to the control system when a plant startup, plant shutdown, product grade changeover, or process load change occurs.

Furthermore, when operators are allowed to change alarm settings during plant operation, the new settings will be automatically uploaded to the AAASuite database the next time there is a change in the operating conditions.

AAASuite automatically prevents the repetition of nuisance alarms that are detected through the detection and diagnosis functions, using the control system's functions.

When the process status changes in such a way that unnecessary alarms no longer occur, AAASuite automatically lifts this alarm suppression.

The system automatically generates more value-added alarms including the periodic renotification of longstanding high/low alarms caused by unstable plant situations and the predictive alert of critical alarms that can trigger an interlock sequence.

AAASuite has been developed to meet the increasing problems encountered in industrial plants that have been aggressively streamlining their control rooms and control systems, reducing the number of operators to achieve more efficient operations and improve their prospects for survival in the midst of prolonged recession and harsh global competition.

In such systems, process alarms provide an essential monitoring function that ensures the safe and stable operation of plants.

Ideally, alarms should be systematically and uniformly distributed at the transition points between normal, error, and shutdown plant status so that operators are notified in a timely manner and only when necessary.

In conventional control rooms, operations have tended to rely on the presence of personnel, including some with special expertise, to monitor and assess a situation in which alarms generally occur randomly.

If such control rooms and control systems are realigned without proper corrective measures, even a minor variation in process status can immediately trigger numerous alarms.

In such a situation, operators may miss critical alarms and fail to respond quickly or correctly to abnormal situations, resulting in operations that exceed product design specifications, the loss of raw materials, delayed deliveries, damaged equipment, plant shutdowns, or even disaster.

In the worst-case scenario, a manufacturer could incur losses far exceeding any economic benefit that could come from the streamlining of a control room.

In this context, alarm management, which includes the optimisation and upgrading of alarms, has become a priority for many plants.

Many users have introduced alarm analysis and reporting systems from various suppliers in order to get a better picture of their plant operations, but because of employee turnover and/or reduction in budgets, many plants do not have a sufficient number of engineers on hand who possess the level of plant experience and knowledge necessary to be able to take full advantage of these analytical systems.

Consequently, many of these plants have not yet succeeded in fully solving the problems that they had sought to address with the introduction of these systems, and are still plagued by alarm "flooding".

Now, with the availability of Yokogawa's AAASuite, these issues need no longer be a problem.