Poor performing alarm systems overwhelm the operator with alarm oods and hinder his ability to effectively

manage plant upsets. Industry incident investigations have shown that time is the most critical factor in a console operators ability to deal with abnormal situations. They must often be able to take action within seconds in order to safely mitigate the impact of an upset. PAS is the original alarm management software and engineering services company. Our extensive experience in this eld has resulted in software that improves the safety and protability of plants worldwide. Industry leaders around the world have selected PAS as their preferred solution provider to improve the performance of their alarm systems.

The Seven Steps to Effective Alarm Management

Implementing alarm management best practices requires an effective and comprehensive methodology supported by mission-specic software and experienced professionals. From our extensive experience, PAS has developed the industrys most rigorous alarm management methodology. The seven steps in this methodology are: 1. Alarm Philosophy 2. Data collection and benchmarking 3. Bad-actor alarm resolution 4. Alarm documentation and rationalization 5. Alarm audit and enforcement 6. Real-time alarm management 7. Alarm system control and maintenance PSS Alarm Management Software and Services enable effective implementation of this methodology, which can be found in PAS Alarm Management Handbook.

Alarm Management Services

PAS consulting and engineering services are the cornerstone of a successful alarm management program. These services are: Alarm Philosophy Facilitation -We custom tailor an alarm philosophy to match your specic needs and meet industry best practices. Alarm Baseline and Benchmark - We assess the performance of your alarm system against industry benchmarks providing you the ability to prioritize your action plans and quantify your improvements Alarm Bad Actor Resolution - We identify and resolve bad actor alarms, resulting in an immediate improvement of your alarm system. Bad actors are the relative few alarms that produce a signicant number of the problems. Documentation and Rationalization We re-engineer your alarm system in accordance with best practices. On average, we have found up to 67% of unrationalized alarms are extraneous. Training - We provide training on our industry leading alarm management methodology and how best to utilize PAS software to identify and resolve common alarm system problems.

PAS pioneered alarm management software in 1993. Our more than 200 years of cumulative alarm management experience has resulted in software that improves the safety and protability of processing and power generation plants worldwide.

PSS Alarm Essentials

PSS Alarm Essentials are the basic applications required for any alarm management program. These applications encompass steps two and three in the seven-step methodology developed by PAS for creating a highly effective alarm management system. The PSS Alarm Essentials package includes: Alarm and Event Analysis utilizes your control systems alarm and event data to facilitate a wide range of analyses. It establishes the current state of the alarm system, and identies areas for improvement. The alarm and event analysis also provides the metrics for KPI reporting. Real-time Alarm Scanner provides plant personnel an alternate view of control system alarms and events from their desktop in real time. Standing Alarm Summary provides a view of the standing alarms without returns, which is determined from the event log. The summary page will automatically update with alarm acknowledgments and returns. Process and Event Explorer facilitates incident investigations by providing a synchronized composite view of events and process trend data for the same period. This enables the reconstruction of occurrences leading up to, during and subsequent to a process upset or incident. Alarm and Event Journal provides an ofine view of alarms and operator changes from any desktop. The user can select the start date, the end date, and the journal entry types to be viewed. Maintenance Log provides the ability to track the maintenance activities relative to alarms. It also allows for the removal of these alarms from frequent alarm analysis.

PSS Alarm Advanced Elements

PSS Alarm Advanced Elements extend the rigor and comprehensiveness of your alarm management program. Due to the real-time nature of these applications, they have been designed to work together. PSS Alarm Advanced Elements ensure the operator receives clear, relevant, and timely alarm information to effectively operate the plant. The PSS Alarm Advanced Elements include: PSS Audit and Enforce monitors changes in control system parameters and enables the restoration of approved values if any have changed. Audits may be scheduled or triggered by a pre-dened event. This provides a method to maintain alarm settings or ensure specic conditions are met upon a specic event. Exception reporting is provided in either case. PSS Alarm Shelving provides the ability to temporarily disable nuisance alarms, and generate reports to facilitate corrective action. Operators can safely shelve repeatedly activated alarms, and after a congurable period, they will be automatically re-enabled. PSS Documentation and Rationalization provides a comprehensive platform for capturing causes, consequences, corrective actions, and time to respond information related to process alarms. It can be customized to meet the sites alarm management philosophy and strategies. PSS Dynamic Alarming detects the current operating state of the plant and dynamically modies alarm settings based on that state. This dynamic approach keeps the information to the operator concise and reduces the amount of distractions. This provides a consistent approach to achieving EEMUA and ISA best practices for real-time alarm management.

Integrity Integration
PlantState Suite (PSS) now integrates with PAS Integrity Software. Integrity maps the Automation Genome, which is the collective conguration within and among all automation systems in a plant. The integration allows users to launch and display Integrity from PSS based on specic context. All Integrity functionality is able to be displayed, including control maps, LoopSheets, and defect nder.