The document outlines best practices for managing alarm systems in industrial applications, emphasizing the importance of prioritizing, organizing, and consolidating alarms to prevent alarm floods and other issues. It covers key concepts such as alarm hierarchies, shelving, disabling, and escalating alarms, alongside maintaining a well-documented alarm philosophy. Inductive Automation’s Ignition platform is highlighted as a versatile tool for SCADA, MES, and IIoT applications with global usage.

2. Moderator
Don Pearson
Chief Strategy Officer
Inductive Automation

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

5. Used By Industries Worldwide

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

7. Presenter
Travis Cox
Co-Director of Sales Engineering,
Inductive Automation

8. A Poorly Managed Alarm System

9. Best Practices from the Alarm Management Handbook

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

18. Demo: Alarm Filtering

19. Prioritize Your Alarms

20. Prioritize Your Alarms
Priority Levels:
• Set most alarms at a lower priority
• Set alarms that do not require a
response as Diagnostic

21. Demo: How to Prioritize an Alarm

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.

25. Demo: Shelving and Disabling Alarms

26. Consolidate Alarms
Reduce the Number of Alarms
• Avoid alarm floods by consolidating multiple alarms into a single
message

27. Consolidate Alarms
Delay and Frequency

28. Demo: Alarm Consolidation

29. Escalate Alarms
• Changing the priority, type, and/or distribution of unacknowledged
notification

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

31. Demo: Alarm Escalation

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

33. Demo: Remote Alarm Notification

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.

37. Design Like a Pro Series
Available at: inductiveautomation.com/resources

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