In this webinar, alarming experts from Inductive Automation will dive into the best practices of alarm management to help you improve the safety of your industrial system and reduce catastrophic downtime incidents. No matter which industry you work in, these time-tested principles will help you get the most out of your SCADA alarming system.
Watch this webinar to learn more about:
What alarms should and shouldn’t be used for
- Prioritizing your alarms
- Getting nuisance alarms under control
- How to reduce alarm floods
- How to easily set up complex alarming systems and remote alarms
- And more
3. Today’s Agenda
• Introduction to Ignition
• Understand What Alarms Are For
• Don't Let Alarms Get Out of Control
• Organize Your Alarms
• Prioritize Your Alarms
• Shelve & Disable Alarms When Necessary
• Consolidate Alarms
• Escalate Alarms
• Remote Alarm Notification
• Q&A
4. About Inductive Automation
• Founded in 2003
• HMI, SCADA, MES, and IIoT software
• Installed in 100+ countries
• Over 1,500 integrators
• Used by 44% of Fortune 100 companies
Learn more at: inductiveautomation.com/about
6. Ignition: Industrial Application Platform
One Universal Platform for SCADA, MES & IIoT:
• Unlimited licensing model
• Cross-platform compatibility
• Based on IT-standard technologies
• Scalable server-client architecture
• Web-managed
• Web-launched on desktop or mobile
• Modular configurability
• Rapid development and deployment
10. Understand What Alarms Are For
Alarms are:
• Conditions evaluated with respect to a specific numeric data point
• Usually configured on a tag or data point
11. Understand What Alarms Are For
Basic Alarm Terms:
• Active or Clear
• Alarm Notification
• Alarm Journal
12. Understand What Alarms Are For
Alarms:
• Tell when something is wrong in your system
• Must be managed carefully
• Can cover up the real problem when there are too
many of them
13. Don't Let Alarms Get Out of Control
How to Best Use Alarms:
• For problems that require action
• To easily identify an issue
• Use alarms sparingly
14. Don't Let Alarms Get Out of Control
Common Alarm System Problems:
• Alarm Flood: 10+ alarms in a 10-min period
• Stale Alarm: Stays in alarm state continuously for 24+ hrs
• Chattering Alarm: Goes from active clear 3+ times in 1 min
15. Don't Let Alarms Get Out of Control
Benchmarks:
• 150 alarms or less per day is considered manageable
• No more than 20 alarm floods per week
• No more than 20 stale alarms per week
• No more than 10 chattering alarms per week
16. Organize Your Alarms
Use Hierarchy to Filter Alarms for Operators
• Two ways to filter alarms:
◦ Naming and organization of tags and folders
17. Organize Your Alarms
Use Hierarchy to Filter Alarms for Operators
• Two ways to filter alarms:
◦ Naming and organization of tags and folders
◦ Associated data
22. Shelve and Disable Alarms When Necessary
Shelving:
• Temporarily silencing an alarm
23. Shelve and Disable Alarms When Necessary
Disabling
• Stopping an alarm from being evaluated
• Can be used for nuisance alarms
(upstream/downstream)
24. Shelve and Disable Alarms When Necessary
State-Based Alarming (a.k.a. Alarm Flood Suppression):
• Disable alarms for machines that are intentionally turned off
• Alarm settings dynamically adjusted to match proper settings for each
state
• Before using state-based alarming, assess whether your process is a
good candidate for it.
30. Escalate Alarms in Ignition
Alarm Notification Pipelines:
• Innovative graphical design feature for quickly building alarm
notification logic
• Use drag-and-drop to create notification scenarios
• Connect schedules, users’ contact information, rosters and
notification profiles
• When an alarm is cleared, acknowledged, or shelved, it drops out of
the pipeline
32. Remote Alarming in Ignition
Remote Alarm Notification:
• Configure tags on one gateway
• Alarms sent through a central gateway
• Manage Email, Voice, and SMS equipment from a central location
and provide those services to a multitude of Gateways
34. Maintain Your Improved Alarm System
• Create an alarm philosophy document
• Create a master alarm database (alarm
rationalization)
• Document, communicate, and approve all
changes to the alarming system
• Audit your overall alarm management work
processes continuously
35. Best Practices Recap
• Think about alarms and manage them carefully.
• Use filtering to organize alarms.
• Prioritize alarms (most should be diagnostic).
• Know how and when to shelve alarms.
• Disable nuisance alarms when necessary.
• Consolidate alarms to reduce alarm floods.
• Use escalation to notify team members selectively.
• Maintain the system with document, database, and regular
audits.
36.
37. Design Like a Pro Series
Available at: inductiveautomation.com/resources
38.
39. Questions & Comments
Jim Meisler x227
Vannessa Garcia x231
Vivian Mudge x253
Account Executives
Myron Hoertling x224
Shane Miller x218
Ramin Rofagha x251
Maria Chinappi x264
Dan Domerofski x273
Lester Ares x214
800-266-7798 x247
Melanie Moniz
Director of Sales:
Jeff Osterback x207
Travis Cox
Co-Director of Sales Engineering:
x229
travis@inductiveautomation.com