Having good alarm management in a process automation system is critical to safe and productive process control.  Unfortunately, many current installations have significant room for improvement as current implementations often include standing alarms, chattering alarms, redundant alarms, and alarm floods that can overwhelm the operators during abnormal situations, potentially leading to production outages or worse.  It’s an alarming situation! 

In this episode, we are joined by Ethan Cook, Technical Consultant for Siemens Digital Industries who will discuss how to improve alarm management by utilizing international standards and guidelines as well as integrating digitalization.  New analytics tools can sort through the mountains of alarm data to uncover areas for improvement and assist in optimizing alarm management systems leading to a much more relaxing and safe production environment.

Show notes:   

• Video (Siemens): Process Event Analytics Overview (https://youtu.be/9PGohqpmpls)  

• Video (Siemens): Process Event Analytics Demonstration (https://youtu.be/WSaMmN8QZFw) 

• Website (Siemens): Process Event Analytics (https://support.industry.siemens.com/cs/ec/en/view/109769738)  

• White Paper (Siemens): Setting a new standard in alarm management (https://assets.new.siemens.com/siemens/assets/api/uuid:234f1026-298f-49dc-8961-0c5223c38588/white-paper-alarm-management-2021-final.pdf) 

• Article (ISA): Alarm management questions that everyone asks (https://www.isa.org/intech-home/2020/march-april/features/alarm-management-questions-that-everyone-asks)

Contact us: 

• Ethan Cook ([email protected]) 

• Jonas Norinder ([email protected])  

• Don Mack ([email protected])