Alarms have become an essential part of modern systems, and their ease of implementation during system upgrades can sometimes lead to too many unnecessary alerts that, if triggered together, can potentially leave operators oblivious to the real problems. In many situations, when a facility has been operational for over half a decade, process variations, equipment wear and other changes can degrade process parameters significantly away from their peak-performance setpoints. This can lead to wasting 25-35% of an operator's shift on addressing needless alarms.
Alarm management follows a defined improvement philosophy which aims at reducing operator overloading, preventing distractions and helping them focus on issues that actually need operator attention. Automate's alarm management is an ISA18 and IEC 62682 compliant software solution that helps rationalize alarms and improve operator performance significantly. The alarm management software comes with alarm and event dashboards that show management as well as other stakeholders what the status of their facility alarms is; helping them identify systems and areas that require immediate action.