Alarm Management Getting the Most Out of your Yokogawa Control System Session 2

Introduction

The presenter introduces himself and the topic of alarm management. He provides some background information about Exida, the company he works for, and their focus on functional safety, cybersecurity, and alarm management.

About Exida

• Exida was formed over 20 years ago by two individuals who wanted to make the world a safer place.

• Exida focuses on functional safety, cybersecurity, and alarm management.

• Exida is a leader in the certification of products and systems related to safety devices. They also have a program for certifying people's competence in performing functional safety lifecycle tasks.

Agenda

• The presenter outlines the agenda for the webinar which includes topics such as alarm management functionality, rationalization, shelving, and key tools from Yokogawa.

Standards

• The presenter discusses two standards that guide their approach to alarm management: AMUA 191 (first created in 1999), which proposed the concept of alarm shelving; and ISA 18.2/IEC 62682 (first published in 2009/2014), which define an alarm management life cycle workflow process.

Alarm Rationalization

The presenter discusses different tools that can be used for alarm rationalization including Yokogawa's SILL Alarm tool and EXA Quantum AMD tool as well as CAMS software. He also talks about how these tools fit into the overall alarm management life cycle workflow process.

Tools for Rationalization

• Different tools can be used for rationalizing alarms including Yokogawa's SILL Alarm tool, EXA Quantum AMD tool, and CAMS software.

• CAMS software is particularly useful for presenting alarm information to operators and invoking alarm suppression functions.

• Yokogawa's EXOPilot tool can be used for advanced alarming during the monitoring and assessment stage of the life cycle.

Key Tools

The presenter discusses key tools from Yokogawa and others that can help deliver alarm management functionality.

Alarm Shelving

• AMUA 191 proposed the concept of alarm shelving, which allows operators to temporarily suppress alarms that are not critical or require immediate attention.

• Yokogawa's SILL Alarm tool and EXA Quantum AMD tool can be used for management of change related to alarm rationalization.

• CAMS software provides advanced alarming functionality such as presentation of alarm information to operators and invocation of alarm suppression functions.

Advanced Alarming

• Yokogawa's EXOPilot tool can be used for advanced alarming during the monitoring and assessment stage of the life cycle.

Overview of Yokogawa's Alarm Management Tools

This section provides an overview of the different tools available in Yokogawa's alarm management system.

Yokogawa's Alarm Management Tools

• CAMS software controls the presentation of alarm and message information to the operator. It enhances alarm information for presentation to the operator and provides advanced alarming capabilities like shelving, suppression, and filtering.

• Exaquantum ARA is a tool for performance monitoring and assessment that generates performance reports.

• AMD acts as a master alarm database for managing change auditing enforcement and maintaining system integrity.

• Exa Plug software analyzes alarms and presents reports on what's happening. It also does analysis of operator actions and events that occur.

• Exapilot software is used for procedural automation, providing operators with their own semi-automatic sequences instead of manual operation. It can also be used for advanced alarming capability suppression of groups of alarms.

• Sill Alarm Tool from exeter guides through the rationalization process, acts as the master alarm database, defines alarm response procedures, does advanced alarming design, auditing, and enforcement.

The Seven-step Process for Alarm Management

This section outlines Yokogawa's seven-step process for effective alarm management.

The Seven-step Process

• Step 1: Initial benchmarking and creation of an alarm philosophy document

• Step 2: Rationalization phase

• Step 3: Advanced alarm design

• Step 4: Implementation

• Step 5: Building of alarm response procedures

• Step 6: Performance monitoring and assessment

• Step 7: Audit capabilities for comparing the alarm system configuration that's actually running in the DCS versus what you expect or want coming out of rationalization.

Architecture Overview

This section provides an overview of Yokogawa's alarm management architecture.

Architecture Overview

• Alarms are generated from function blocks in the controllers and propagated up through CAMS. Additional information can be added, and some information can be changed by CAMS before it's presented to the operator.

Prioritizing Alarms

This section discusses the importance of prioritizing alarms and how to do it for a Yokogawa system. It covers the common method of prioritization, as well as the capabilities of CAMS and SILL Alarm.

Importance of Priority

• Priority is important for operators to determine which alarm to respond to first.

• Priority is based on evaluating how bad the consequences would be if the operator didn't respond and how much time is available to respond.

• The combination of significant consequence and short response time dictates the priority of an alarm.

Methods of Prioritization

• The most common method is based on a risk matrix used for PHA or HASUP.

• CAMS supports prioritization based on safety, environmental, or financial purposes and worst-case consequences.

• SILL Alarm can define a prioritization scheme based on information in an alarm philosophy.

Alarm Rationalization Process

• Load alarm configuration into rationalization tool to create master alarm database.

• Cams has an export/import interface that allows selecting pieces of alarm configuration to export and import into SILL Alarm.

• Evaluate validity and objective analysis by looking at consequences, likely causes, corrective actions with input from senior operators.

• Rationalization can also become a knowledge capture process by documenting senior operator responses in an alarm help document.

Rationalization of Alarm Priority and Classification

This section discusses the importance of documenting the rationale for setting alarm priority and classification. It also explains how to define alarm priority based on purpose and consequence, as well as how to group alarms with common requirements.

Importance of Documenting Rationale

• Recording information about alarm priority and consequence assessment allows for easy updates if new information arises.

• Failure to document rationale can make it difficult to recreate or modify priorities later on.

Defining Alarm Priority

• Alarm priority is defined based on purpose (e.g. safety, environmental, financial) and consequence severity.

• Response time is not included in determining alarm priority.

• In Yokogawa CAMS system, users can override automatic priority settings.

Defining Alarm Classification

• Alarm classification groups alarms with common requirements for testing, training, or management of change (MOC).

• Classifications help prioritize important alarms in a system.

• Functional safety usage should be documented for each alarm used as a safeguard or protection layer.

• Cross-referencing helps ensure that alarms are taken seriously and not disabled without proper justification.

Advanced Alarming

• Shelving an alarm may be allowed depending on specific requirements.

Documenting SilAlarm Information

This section covers the documentation process for SilAlarm information such as consequence thresholds, process dynamic information, and user parameters.

Documentation Process

• Consequence threshold is documented when setting alarm limits.

• Process dynamic information is documented to provide rationale for setting alarm limits.

• User parameters can be defined and documented for unique entities, projects, or sites.

Importing Information into CAMS

• Information from SilAlarm documentation process can be imported into the Yokogawa CAMS system.

Pushing Information to Operators

This section explains how information from the SilAlarm documentation process can be presented to operators through custom fields in the Yokogawa CAMS system.

Custom Fields

• Custom fields can be defined in the Yokogawa CAMS system.

• SilAlarm information such as consequence thresholds and user parameters can be imported into these custom fields.

Alarm Rationalization and Response Procedures

This section discusses how to use alarm rationalization information to create alarm response procedures that provide actionable advice to operators. It also covers different types of alarm suppression.

Using Alarm Rationalization Information for Alarm Response Procedures

• Alarm rationalization information can be imported back into CAMS to define additional fields and bring in extra information.

• The guidance tab provided for alarm messages can be used to present information, including the call-up of a file created out of SILL alarm.

• To make the most of the alarm rationalization information, additional fields can be added in CAMS and loaded with useful details from rationalization. These fields can then be presented to the operator as part of their response process.

Creating Effective Alarm Response Procedures

• Alarm response procedures should include potential causes, consequences if not responded to, and actual descriptions of what the operator should do.

• New alarms will trigger a screen with more actionable intelligence for operators, making responses quicker, more consistent, and effective.

Types of Alarm Suppression

• Design suppression is where the control system automatically determines when an alarm should be suppressed based on configuration settings.

• Alarm shelving allows operators to temporarily suppress nuisance alarms so they are not a distraction but will come back after a period of time.

• Out-of-service suppression is where an alarm would typically be suppressed during maintenance of underlying hardware.

Conclusion

The video concludes by summarizing key points covered in this session.

• Effective use of alarm rationalization information can help create actionable alarm response procedures that improve operator responses.

• Different types of alarm suppression, such as design suppression and alarm shelving, can be used to prevent nuisance alarms from distracting operators.

• Overall, the goal is to provide operators with more useful information so they can respond quickly and effectively to alarms.

Introduction to Yokogawa's Shelving Functionality

In this section, the speakers introduce Yokogawa's shelving functionality and explain why it is important to understand how to use it effectively.

Understanding How to Use Shelving

• Consider which alarms should be allowed to be shelved based on priority or classification.

• Determine if there should be a limit for how long alarms can be shelved and if there should be an authorization process for operators or supervisors.

• Define different groupings or shelves with different purposes for each one.

• Allow operators to drag and drop alarms into the appropriate shelf based on their characteristics.

Types of Shelving

• One-shot shelving suppresses an alarm for a selected period of time unless the alarm clears while on the shelf. This is useful for stale alarms that need to enunciate again as soon as they clear.

• Continuous shelving keeps an alarm on the shelf until the time is up or until manually unshelved by an operator. This type of shelving is ideal for chattering alarms that would otherwise require constant reshelving.

• Automatic shelving can be triggered when detecting scenarios such as an alarm flood or temporarily suppressing all alarms from a specific piece of equipment.

Configuring Shelving

• Define each shelf by giving it a name, description, and type of shelving (one-shot, continuous, automatic).

• Specify whether the shelf will expire after a fixed period of time or at a specific time (e.g., end of shift).

• Set the maximum amount of time an alarm can be shelved to 24 hours.

Defining and Using Alarm Shelving

In this section, the speaker discusses how to define different shelves for alarms and how operators can use them. They also talk about how to ensure that shelving is being used appropriately.

Defining Shelves

• Define different shelves and label them so that the operator understands what they're used for.

• Each alarm has a separate enable/disable parameter for shelving, which can be set externally from an excel spreadsheet or from an alarm.

• Rationalization determines rules for alarm shelving based on priority or classification.

Operator Interaction with Shelves

• Operators drag and drop nuisance alarms or alarms they feel should be shelved to appropriate shelves.

• When the alarm shelving time period has elapsed, the operator gets an indication of that with a clock icon.

• The operator would need to drag unshelved alarms back into the alarm summary.

Examples of How to Use Shelving

• Provide continuous shelving functionality to the operator for low and medium priority alarms. High and critical priority alarms cannot be shelved.

• Provide the option for the operator to shelve an alarm for 30 minutes maximum, either continuously or as a one-shot shelf.

• Set up different shelves where the alarm will come off at specific times or after specific durations. Only supervisors have access in some cases.

Reviewing Performance Reports

• To ensure appropriate use of shelving, performance reports should be reviewed periodically.

• Exaquantum ar ara can show statistics about suppressed alarms to ensure that underlying issues are being addressed.

Additional Resources

• Yokogawa created an ebook on alarm shelving that goes through a lot of the information discussed in this section.

Advanced Alarming and Alarm Suppression

This section covers advanced alarming and alarm suppression in the CAM system. It discusses eclipsing, static suppression, dynamic suppression, and other ways to design suppression.

Eclipsing

• Eclipsing is a function that automatically hides one alarm condition from a tag when it's not as important as another alarm condition.

• The highest priority alarm should be the one that stays and the lower priority one gets eclipsed.

• Depending on how you define alarms and do rationalization, your high alarm may be a higher priority than your high-high in which case you'd want to make sure that eclipsing reflects that as well.

Static Suppression

• Static suppression is used for scenarios where there's a planned transition into a mode.

• You can define which alarms you want to suppress within the control logic or custom face plates in CAMS HMI.

• Exa Pilot software has an interface designed specifically for static suppression of a group of alarms like all of the alarms that would be part of a reactor unit.

Dynamic Suppression

• Dynamic suppression is used for unplanned mood transitions such as equipment tripping unexpectedly.

• Within SOLE ALARM we're going to define what the suppression module is used for set up some state detection logic and define the alarms that should be suppressed.

• We can extract this information in a report like you see here that can then be used for configuration within the control system.

Other Ways to Design Suppression

• We can define a suppression grouping within CAMS itself to automatically suppress a set of alarms.

• There's also a function called load shedding which is the automatic alarm shelving.

Introduction to Evaluating Alarm Performance

This section introduces the evaluation of alarm performance and key performance indicators. It also discusses how the Exaquantum ARA tool can be used to evaluate alarm performance over time.

Key Performance Indicators for Alarm Performance Evaluation

• ISA 18.2 and IEC standards define key performance indicators and metrics for evaluating overall alarm rate, nuisance alarms, and system configuration.

• The Exaquantum ARA tool provides a dashboard to show alarm performance over time, reports on alarm enunciation rate by operating position, priority distribution judged against AMUA 191 criteria, identification of alarm floods, chattering alarms, stale alarms, and bad actors.

• Reports on identifying specific alarms that are performing poorly that could benefit from rationalization. It also automatically calculates enunciated priority distribution.

Advanced Capabilities of Exaquantum ARA Tool

• The software can analyze alarm history and look for correlation between different alarms. It identifies redundant alarms and patterns of alarms that go off together.

• Rationalization is done to reduce the number of nuisance alarms by eliminating some of them that indicate one problem.

Auditing and Enforcement

• Comparison of the master alarm database versus what's actually running in the control system is done to detect differences in parameters.

• Sill Alarm can be used for auditing and enforcement protocol where it's automatically resetting the value in the control system or set up as a manual process where you review what's desired to be enforced.

Summary

This section summarizes what was discussed in previous sections.

• To get the most out of your alarming capability, start with the CAM software and evaluate its capabilities. The Exaquantum ARA tool provides a dashboard to show alarm performance over time, reports on alarm enunciation rate by operating position, priority distribution judged against AMUA 191 criteria, identification of alarm floods, chattering alarms, stale alarms, and bad actors. It also has advanced capabilities to analyze alarm history and look for correlation between different alarms. Rationalization is done to reduce the number of nuisance alarms by eliminating some of them that indicate one problem. Auditing and enforcement protocol is used to detect differences in parameters between the master alarm database versus what's actually running in the control system.

Alarm Rationalization and Response Procedures

This section discusses the importance of alarm rationalization and creating response procedures for alarms. It also mentions the capabilities of Yokogawa products for alarm suppression.

Importance of Alarm Rationalization

• Encourages doing alarm rationalization to create response procedures.

• Creating reference information for operators to know what to do when an alarm occurs.

• Performance monitoring is key in continuous improvement process.

Capabilities of Yokogawa Products

• Yokogawa products have built-in capabilities for alarm suppression.

• Exopilot provides auxiliary software for alarm suppression.

Upcoming Training Classes

This section talks about upcoming training classes on alarm management, functional safety, and cyber security.

Alarm Management Class

• Flagship class: "Alarm Fundamentals for the Practitioner".

• Online live version available at the end of April.

• Certificate exam available after completion.

Other Courses Available

• Functional safety and cyber security courses available.

• Courses available online on demand.

Additional Resources

This section provides additional resources for learning more about alarm management topics.

Exeter Website and YouTube Channel

• Exeter website has a list of webinars and topics available.

• Exeter's YouTube channel has collections of past presentations on different areas such as alarm management, functional safety, and cyber security.