Alarm Management Program: Implementation Experience in a Petrochemical Company

Abnormal Situation is a disturbance or series of disturbances in a process that cause plant operations to deviate from their normal operating state. They happen when the automated control system can not cope and consequently, the operations team must intervene to supplement the control system. These disturbances may cause a reduction in production; in more serious cases it may endanger human life. They extend, develop, and change over time in the dynamic process control environments increasing the complexity of the intervention requirements.

Based on data from insurance reports, it is estimated that the cost of lost production due to accidents to be at least $10 billion annually in the U.S. Costs of equipment repair, replacement, environmental fines, compensation for human casualties, investigation, litigation, etc., represent another $10 billion.

Much work was done on Abnormal Situation Management especially for situation awareness issues. Situation awareness is the one where the operator will proactively monitor the plant to establish and maintain awareness of the current state of the process to ensure operational integrity, contribute significantly to the plant's optimization, and respond correctly and timely to abnormal situations.

Alarms are required when the operator's attention is being demanded elsewhere, or workload is too great to monitor all points on his/her own. Critical process alarms indicate abnormal situation events and are potential triggers for near-miss process safety events. In an effectively rationalized alarm system, the count of alarms represents the count of transitions into the ?upset? region. On the other hand, bad alarm systems are recognized common problem in industry. They are often cited as contributing factors in industria incidents: Milford Haven, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, BP explosion, and so many more.

Following Abnormal Situation Management best practices, a corporate-wide Alarm Management Program was implemented in a big petrochemical company following a previous successful Advanced Process Control and Real Time Optimization (APC&RTO) Program. It was composed of hardware and software infra-structrure installation, procedures implementation and training.

World class alarm management software was implemented. It collects alarms data automatically from different control systems. Real time and historical data, automatic reports, analysis and manage of change (MOC) tools are available by web based interfaces everywhere. They had a positive impact in the visibility of the program and in the collaboration across functional groups.

Alarms were collected and compared against international accepted EEMUA based KPIs benchmarks. EEMUA (Engineering Equipment and Materials Users Association) is a European, non profit industry association, run for the benefit of companies that own or operate industrial facilities. EEMUA publishes a range of engineering guides, industry standards and specifications. In 1999, EEMUA did the world a large service via the original publication of their document 191: Alarm Systems: A Guide to Design, Management, and Procurement. This foundational document addressed the widespread problems associated with screen-based alarm systems, mostly associated with Distributed Control Systems (DCSs). In this document, EEMUA described a variety of principles, practices, measurements, work practices, and provided other valuable information about Alarm Management.

Corporate-wide benchmarks gap evaluation had a very big impact to both top management and technical personnel situation awareness. EEMUA based KPIs were adopted and gap reduction goals were agreed. Alarm Management Program was aligned with ICMM based Quality Program in order to optimize resources and to warranty sustainable results. ICMM (Integrated Capability Maturity Model) is a model that determines what an organization does and how disciplined it is in doing it, by creating a framework for achieving an enterprise-wide approach to continuous process improvement.

A corporate-wide Alarm Philosophy was implemented where alarm management responsibilities and activities were detailed and agreed. Alarm rationalization teams composed of production engineers, operators,and automation engineer were created and trained. Alarm management champions were chosen from operators' team. They are responsible for alarms evaluation, and improvement, as well for the dissemination of the importance of a manageable alarm system.

Alarm management philosophy was reviewed by alarm rationalization teams. Most recurring alarms (bad actors) were first eliminated based on Six Sigma like methodology. Alarms modifications were done by following management of change procedures. Bad actors elimination was redone until Paretto chart reached a flat profile. Alarm rationalization was then done. Alarm rationalization is a procedural PHA-like activity guided by plant alarm philosophy to assess the validity, causes, priority, causes, consequences of alarms of all instruments of the plant It relies heavily on teamwork (facilitator, board operators, process & control engineers, Safety, Health, Environmental representatives and production & maintenance engineers).

Initial results as well as operators' acceptance were very good. Top management reports with graphic evolution are reported monthly. Alarm Management Program is being executed in existing plants and being extended to new acquired plants. Besides increasing situation awareness, it is also reducing operators' team stress and increasing its productivity.

The main reasons for the success of the initiative were (i) the high visibility of the program, (ii) top management and technical personnel buy in, (iii) clear and well defined KPIs, gap reduction objectives and pathforward, (iv) strong safety culture, (v) comprehensive training program, and (vi) state of the art quality program. High visibility of the program is attributed to its corporate-wide nature, and to world class alarm management software.