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Concept
Alarm management
Summary
Alarm management is the application of human factors and ergonomics along with instrumentation engineering and systems thinking to manage the design of an alarm system to increase its usability. Most often the major usability problem is that there are too many alarms annunciated in a plant upset, commonly referred to as alarm flood (similar to an interrupt storm), since it is so similar to a flood caused by excessive rainfall input with a basically fixed drainage output capacity. However, there can also be other problems with an alarm system such as poorly designed alarms, improperly set alarm points, ineffective annunciation, unclear alarm messages, etc. Poor alarm management is one of the leading causes of unplanned downtime, contributing to over $20B in lost production every year, and of major industrial incidents such as the one in Texas City. Developing good alarm management practices is not a discrete activity, but more of a continuous process (i.e., it is more of a journey than a destination).
From their conception, large chemical, refining, power generation, and other processing plants required the use of a control system to keep the process operating successfully and producing products. Due to the fragility of the components as compared to the process, these control systems often required a control room to protect them from the elements and process conditions. In the early days of control rooms, they used what were referred to as "panel boards" which were loaded with control instruments and indicators. These were tied to sensors located in the process streams and on the outside of process equipment. The sensors relayed their information to the control instruments via analogue signals, such as a 4-20 mA current loop in the form of twisted pair wiring. At first these systems merely yielded information, and a well-trained operator was required to make adjustments either by changing flow rates, or altering energy inputs to keep the process within its designed limits.
Official source
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