In 2009, it was released by ANSI/ISA, and in 2016 it was revised, a new standard, Called ISA18.2, For the management of alarms generated on automation and control systems of industrial machines and plants.

ISA 18.2 covers the management of alarm systems for the process industries.

Alarm management is a very important topic - we have all heard stories of operators who become “addicted” to “alarm floods”, “alarm chattering” or “alarm flares” which often have too many information for proper management and prioritization by an operator.

It also happens that sometimes the alarms have been disabled when instead they should have been active, i setpoint have been modified to reduce “annoying trips to the control room”: this causes a dangerous drift towards alarm solutions which can be misleading or even worse, submit inadequate information upon the occurrence of an event.

With results that in many of our process industries can be costly or catastrophic.

Unlike other standards which set strict guidelines, ISA 18.2 is a solution to identify and promote alarm management as a “Recognized and generally accepted Good Engineering Practice” (RAGAGEP, or “Recognized and Generally Accepted Good Engineering Practice”).

And several regulatory bodies in various industries are considering adopting ISA 18.2.

Il ISA document 18.2 describes guidelines for developing and managing an alarm solution.

There are several aspects to developing an appropriate alarm management system:

  • Alarm philosophy – Documentation of the alarm system and processes/workflows to achieve this
  • Identification: processes/workflows to identify which ones alarms are required
  • Rationalization - Evaluate that the alarm meets the established requirements in the alarm philosophy
  • Detailed design: the process of designing alarms for meet the requirements listed in Rationalization and in Philosophy alarms
  • Implementation – The design of the alarm, put into operation
  • Surgery – Includes training/training
  • Machine maintenance: review and management of alarms
  • Monitoring and Assessment – Monitoring of the alarm system to verify that it meets the goals of the Alarm Philosophy
  • Management of variations/changes – The process and documentation of the change process
  • Enviromental compliance audit: Periodic review of the entire alarm solution to maintain and improve the functioning and defined purposes

Alarms on SCADA, DCS, etc.

 

On many control systems, supervision and monitoring of plants (DCS and/or SCADA) often there are “too many alarms”.

If an automated control system is well designed and built, the number of alarms should be limited.

If they arrive and “too many alarms” are generated, then it is probable that it is the plant itself that has not been designed and built adequately, and therefore produces too many alarms due to anomalies that occur, generated by malfunctions of the system itself and/or by situations that are out of specification.

Since the 80's, the number of alarms configured on the control systems and to be presented to the operators has increased dramatically: from tens/hundreds to thousands of alarms, e this trend is likely to worsen further with the advent of the IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things).

This trend may have been generated by several factors:

  • increase of many sensors in line due to the reduction of the costs of the sensors
  • manpower reduction and the operators on the plant: an attempt was therefore made to compensate for this "decrease in eyes and ears" with an increase in the number of sensors
  • la growing complexity of machinery and plants, with a consequent increase in the complexity of the control systems and in the possible correlations between events and alarms in production
  • also there poor knowledge of the process and the plant by those who develop the control system has led to an increase in alarms: with the excuse of "better to prevent", an additional "important" alarm is presented

We have already talked about these problems and how ISA18.2 effectively addresses them.

Dream Report and alarm management in accordance with the ISA 18.2 standard

 

dream report it was designed to perform alarm analysis and reporting functions.

Indeed, it is an easy-to-use and relatively inexpensive solution for the stages of operation, maintenance and monitoring of the ISA strategy 18.2 that we want to adopt for our system.

dream report offers specially designed drivers for numerous alarm files of the software packages and HMI/SCADA/DCS solutions on the market.

This functionality to use diversified data sources should be reviewed to evaluate specific features and benefits, but in general, we can say that Dream Report:

  • Filter alarms based on various criteria, such as: Origin, Operator, Priority, Status and more
  • Count the alarms: Generates alarm statistics and counts based on filter criteria
  • Document and view Alarms – Generates alarm reports for archiving and distribution and provides an interactive interface to alarms for real-time review and analysis. This feature can be programmed for automation, i.e. a monthly report of the most critical or most frequent top alarms, alarm response times, total number of alarms per site or piece of equipment, alarms handled by the operator, etc. Alarm documentation by Setpoint, by Status: active / protected / shielded / etc.
  • Automatic delivery of results – Reports via e-mail, FTP files, automatic population of a portal for browser access.
  • Document management – Delete old files, Delete after n files, Move old files, etc.

In Dream Report there are several specific built-in features for alarm management.

  • Driver for accessing the alarm source – These vary from vendor to vendor, but in general alarm drivers access alarms from various repositories and also enable filters from those sources. This allows the user to create many alarm channels to access the desired data in a known context (All Alarms, High Priority Alarm, Alarms by Site / Equipment / Source, etc.)
  • Alarm statistics – Alarm count, date/time of first, date/time of last. The alarm count highlights the number of alarms over any specified time interval or batch. An alarm analysis benefits from knowledge of other variables over time and recalling alarm timestamps and time calculations such as adding an hour or subtracting an hour would allow you to generate graphs and show other variables related to the 'alarm.
  • These statistics can be used in tables, for example to break down alarm types, such as a monthly report of daily summaries or an analysis of alarm counts over a specified period to identify “alarm flooding”.
  • Alarm table – A table that will display any range of alarms and organize them as needed for analysis. The alarm table is a very flexible object that can also perform alarm analyses, such as alarm instance counts, duration and response time calculations. Table results can be organized as desired, sort and filter by various columns and color code various statistics.
  • Dynamic Alarm Setpoints – Some applications can use this function to dynamically fix alarm sets, which are calculated through combinations with other variables. Dream Report offers the unique ability to generate a report that accesses variables, runs statistics and can then write new alarm limits back to the automation system, if enabled. Reports can be treated as a recipe, download alarms from a database and re-upload them to an HMI / SCADA / DCS; moreover Dream Report can periodically run statistics, dynamically reporting alarms as needed. The main advantage, of course, is to document alarm handling in the process in this way.

All generated documents are available to users through an easy-to-use interface with any browser and mobile device networked.

Dream Report supports a browser-based HTML5 interface with full security and portal user authentication (even for Windows-based domains).

Users have access to the reports that have been assigned to them. Additionally, reports can be automatically emailed to recipients, and those documents can include browser-based portal links to streamline further analysis steps.

The browser-based portal is fully managed by Dream Report. Reports are automatically generated by Dream Report and are automatically added to the portal menu structure, available to anyone who needs access.

The portal also offers fully interactive functionality with the ability to select dates, times, equipment, operators, etc. And then query the alarms of interest.

The features and benefits of alarm management are just one of the areas of excellence in the Dream Report.

In addition to alarm management, Dream Report will provide compliance reports, reports of performance e dashboard for the entire organization.

The justification for this solution comes from actual results, ease of use, flexibility and the cost of the solution itself in terms of design, implementation and maintenance.

Dream Report excels in all of these areas.

If you are considering a solution according to the ISA18.2 standard, Dream Report is an excellent addition to automate the operational, maintenance and monitoring part of this strategy.

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