Implement an Effective Alarm Management Program - exida

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CEP July 2012 19InstrumentationAlarms are used in chemical processing plants to draw the operator s attention to an abnormal condi-tion that, if disregarded, could lead to poor product quality, unplanned downtime, damaged assets, personnel injury, or a catastrophic accident. When employed appro-priately, alarms help the operator to safely run the process within normal operating conditions. They are one of the first layers of protection to prevent the escalation of a haz-ard into an accident (Figure 1). Alarm Management has become increasingly important as chemical plants look for ways to reduce costs, increase productivity, and deal with the loss of experienced operators. It has also become more chal-lenging due to the adoption of the modern distributed control system (DCS). Alarm systems of the past consisted of panel-board control rooms, where the number of alarms was limited by the finite wall space, and there was an actual cost to hard-wire the system into the process (approximately $1,000 per Alarm ) (1).

CEP July 2012 www.aiche.org/cep 21 Table 1. The alarm management lifecycle consists of ten stages that direct the design and implementation of an effective alarm ...

  Management, Lamar, Alarm management