Alarm Audit and Enforcement: Automating the Integrity of Alarms for Manufacturing Systems

[摘要] This work details the development of a continuous monitoring system technology to track the compliance of alarms in a manufacturing environment. A problem arose due to having simultaneous capital projects and continual process optimization work at several production sites. With continual changes to the control systems, a project was developed to ensure that alarm adjustments never violated established safety thresholds for systems. A technique was used to rationalize alarms using a risk based objective analysis to establish safety thresholds for each alarm. Then a tool was developed that continually cross-referenced alarm safety server with process control network to immediately notify management and engineering of any adjustments that violated alarm and safety rules for the site. This work led both to improved site safety and to an improvement of alarm metrics due to greater confidence in adjusting alarms with this audit tool. One site saw a monthly reduction of the quantity alarms by 55% and the elimination of alarm floods.

[发布机构] Chevron and Colorado State University, 709 Lenox Ct., Paso Robles; CA; 93446, United States^1;Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering Colorado State University, 1373 Campus Delivery, Fort Collins; CO; 80523-1373, United States^2

[学科分类] 工业工程学

[关键词] Alarm Floods;Capital projects;Continuous monitoring systems;Manufacturing environments;Objective analysis;Process control networks;Production sites;Safety threshold