Intelligent alarm management in the process industry
A failing alarm management leads to a variety of problems: an overload of alarms making it difficult to prioritize them, stress among employees affecting decisiveness and issues in effectively interpreting and responding to alarms due to a lack of context.
Agidens has therefore developed a modular service that meets ANSI/ISA-18.2 and other applicable standards in the process industry.
THE AGIDENS APPROACH
Agidens has developed a standardized method in accordance with ANSI/ISA-18.2 that can be adapted to your personal needs. Our three-step approach takes you from your alarm philosophy, through a quick scan, to a dashboard for real-time alarm analysis.
This standardized dashboard displays all key alarm performance metrics
- average number of alarms
- priority distribution
- top x alarms
- bad-actor identification
Thanks to the dynamic filtering capabilities, it is easy to zoom in on the data to search for the root causes of alarms.
ALARM DASHBOARD
Agidens developed a report that meets ANSI/ISA-18.2 and other applicable standards in the process industry. It allows for the analysis and consultation of historical alarm data using standard analyses. All of this is filterable based on period, location, priorities, (sub)systems and alarm codes with corresponding descriptions.
- Alarm performance metrics as defined by ANSI/ISA-18.2
- Average number of alarms per x number of minutes, hour, and day
- Peak alarm percentages
- Alarm floods
- Common alarms
- Chattering and fleeting alarms
- Alarms that remain open for a long time
- Priority distribution of alarms
- Suppressed alarms
- Top x alarms
- Distribution of alarms per week and per day
- Bad actors overview: top x alarms based on number, duration, and acknowledgment time
- Response time analysis
- Analysis across different areas and products
RESULT
What are the results? Thanks to the three-step approach, alarms are aligned with the needs of the employees. During integration, Agidens ensures a smooth transition to existing processes, without any downtime. This makes the actions to be taken clearer and eliminates the need to search through the noise, which benefits potential safety risks.
This means working more efficiently, safely and future-proof, so that focus can be placed on more important aspects of operations.
A decrease of 22.5% in priority 1 alarms
- Better configuration, in line with ISA18.2: from 30% priority 1 alarms to 7.5%.
- Monthly identification and improvement of bad actors.
- 50% fewer open alarms.
- Better traceability of assets to be maintained.
- Improved communication in a multidisciplinary team.
“After we implemented our solution for alarm management, and after an agile follow-up, the alarm setup of one of our clients improved spectacularly.”
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Convinced of the benefits our alarm management solution offers? Fill in the contact form and discover how Agidens keeps your alarms under control.