2017

Siemens
Automation
Summit

EXPORTING ALARM SETPOINTS

IN SIEMENS PCS7
Jared Romano, Pigler Automation

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2017 Automation Summit

Title: EXPORTING ALARM INFORMATION FROM SIEMENS PCS7

Track: Productivity & Efficiency
Presenter: Jared Romano
Company: Pigler Automation
Session #: 5.1

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 • Pigler Automation, LLC was founded in 2005
• We are a Siemens Solution Partner for PCS7 with 7 Siemens PCS7-Certified Engineers
• Located in Longmont, Colorado -- 30 miles north of Denver
• 10 Employees and Growing
• Industries Served: Chemical, Power and Mining, ….

For more information please visit:

www.piglerautomation.com
Or call : (866) 871-1456

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Bio Slide

Jared Romano
• B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Colorado State University
• Engineering Intern with Pigler Automation, LLC from April 2014 to May 2015
• Process Controls Engineer with Pigler Automation, LLC since May 2015
• PCS7 Certificed Process Control Engineer

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The Challenge:
The Cost of Mismanaged Alarms

Refining and Chemicals Alarms per

Operator per Day

Without Alarm Management 1350

With Alarm Management 250
Typical Cost
One missed alarm resulting in a $3.5M
unplanned shutdown
One misunderstood alarm as a $15M
result of operator error leading (Impacted losses
to a loss in containment as direct result)

1. Honeywell Process Solutions - Alarm management and rationalization - Intelligent alarm handling rules - Aonghus Keegan
2. Honeywell Process Solutions - Uop Alarm Help Delivered Directly To Operators For Safer, More Productive Operations

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ISA 18.2 Alarm System Management

• In 2003, ISA started developing an
Alarm System Management
standard.
• In 2009 ANSI/ISA-18.2 Management
of Alarm Systems for the Process
Industries standard was published

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What is Alarm Rationalization?

• A process where a cross-functional team of plant stakeholders

reviews, justifies, and documents that each alarm meets the
criteria for being an alarm as set forth in a company’s alarm
philosophy document.

• Involves defining the attributes of each alarm as well as

documenting the consequence, response time, and operator
action.

• The output of rationalization is a Master Alarm Database (also

known as an alarm catalog) containing the alarm configuration
requirements

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ISA 18.2 Rationalization

ISA 18.2 defines specific requirements for alarm

rationalization:

1. Alarm type
2. Priority
3. Class
4. Alarm setpoint value or logical condition
5. Operator action
6. Consequence of Inaction or incorrect action
7. Need for advanced alarm handling techniques if
necessary

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What will we cover?

1. Strategies for developing software

to extract all alarm information
required for rationalization

2. Methods of implementing
rationalized information to improve
plant operations

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How Can We See Alarm Information in PCS7?
Messages tab in Process Object view

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What Is Missing?

1. Alarm type
2. Priority
3. Class
4. Alarm setpoint value or logical condition, disable or enabled
5. Operator action
6. Consequence of Inaction or incorrect action
7. Need for advanced alarm handling techniques if necessary.

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Parameters Tab in Process Object View

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Example: MonAnL

Considerations
• HMI Alarm messages are turned off when either PV_MSG_EN or PV_EN are disabled
• PV_Unit is often Interconnected to a Channel Driver block
• Alarm Limits can also be interconnected

• MonAnL has two ALARM8 Objects

• Block comment is inserted for the event message
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Example: MEAS_MON

Considerations
• Ways to turn off HMI Alarm messages
➢ Suppression IO on MEAS_MON are set to 1

• Unit is configured at the U as a string

• MEAS_MON as only one alarm objects

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Overview of Process

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Expected Result

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First Attempt: Excel Macro

Problems:
Required many tabs to manage data Additional formatting required

Copy Data to Spreadsheet Messy and Complicated code

Difficult to export configuration data Slow Processing

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VB.Net or C# in Visual Studio

Advantages
• Easy to design a full UI
• Provides use of data tables
o Easily export data tables to .XML configuration file
o Run SQL queries to search for setpoints – Minimizes Looping
• Quickly convert CSV exported from Process Object View to data table
using OLEDB connector

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Main Interface

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Configure PCS7 Block Types

• Use objects in a Windows form to help

organize the input data
• Important Block Parameters:
o Setpoint IO
o Alarm Enable IO
o Msg Enable IO
o Signal Identifier IO
o Unit IO
o MSG_Evid Name
• Import the data entered on the form into
a DataTable for quick querying

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Configure Units and Interconnected Blocks

• Add a unit table and blocks that define the

unit or setpoint through an interconnection

• Configured tables can be stored in .csv or

.XML format using
dataTable.WriteXML(path)

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Exporting from Process Object View

• Parameters Tab - select “Export All I/O”

o Prevents the need to select individual I/O

• Messages tab, select “Export Current view…”

o Includes the Block Comment column
▪ $$BlockComment$$ needs to be replaced with the correct
text
o “Export Messages…” does not include block comment

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Coding: Importing the Data and Making Queries

• Use an OleDb adapter to quickly import the CSV into a data table

• SQL queries can be made to quickly search for relevant data. NO LOOPS!

• Greatly reduces seek time

• Uses less system resources
Note: Data gets returned as DataRow array, not a DataTable. Convert back to data table by first checking the length.

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Convert to Excel

• Closed XML is an open source library to export data tables to .xlsx

• More info: https://github.com/ClosedXML/ClosedXML/wiki
• Add additional rationalization columns and export to excel

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ISA 18.2 Rationalization

ISA 18.2 defines specific requirements for alarm

rationalization:
1. Alarm type
2. Priority
3. Class
4. Alarm setpoint value or logical condition
5. Operator action
6. Consequence of Inaction or incorrect action
7. Need for advanced alarm handling techniques if
necessary.

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New with PCS7 V9.0: Alarm Help Text

Description

Possible
causes

Suggested
operator
action

Consequence

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Filled out Excel

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Import Modified Excel and Export to CSV

The modified Excel file can be converted back to a data table using
Closed XML.
• Full tutorials for using Closed XML can be found at
https://www.aspsnippets.com

The data table can be exported to CSV to import the data back to
PCS7
• Can be done just using a simple StreamWriter or there are open
source tool to simplify
o CSV Helper is a great .NET library for reading and writing CSV
files
o It can be imported via the Visual Studio Package Manager
Console

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Import to PCS7 V9.0 Process Object View

Columns that must be maintained in order for the CSV

to be imported to Messages in Process Object View
• Hierarchy
• Chart
• Block
• I/O name
• Subnumber

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ISA 18.2 Rationalization

ISA 18.2 defines specific requirements for alarm

rationalization:
1. Alarm type
2. Priority
3. Class
4. Alarm setpoint value or logical condition
5. Operator action
6. Consequence of Inaction or incorrect action
7. Need for advanced alarm handling techniques
if necessary.
➢ More information can be found at the User
Community site from the 2014 Automation
Summit Presentation on Smart Alarm Hiding

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Support Operation with Voice Interaction

“Hey Alexa”

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For Voice Interaction
Export to SQL

• The Data Table can also be exported to a SQL Database to allow Third party
software to query

• Anything other than SQL Server it is recommended to install a third-party

connector

• Primary Keys
o Chart
o Block
o IOname
o Subnumber (Sig_#)

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Alexa can make SQL Queries for you!

• Amazon Alexa uses hands-free voice recognition to extract relevant data from
SQL database

• Provides the operator with detailed information including the recommended

course of action

• “Alexa ….. Start Alarms”

• “TI001 high”

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 What’s Next

Alarm Tool Alexa

Include an OPC connection Alexa notifications can be used to alert the operator of
• Provide live data values and quickly determine if any issues in real time as they develop. (Future
feature)
an alarm is enabled or disabled • Use OPC alarm tags to trigger Alexa to
• Retrieve units without interconnection algorithms automatically query Alarm information

Expand these concepts to create IO lists

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EXPORTING ALARM SETPOINTS IN SIEMENS PCS7

Name: Jared Romano

Company: Pigler Automation
Email: Jared.Romano@piglerautomation.com
Phone: (866) 871-1456 Ext. 8
Session #: 5.1
Please fill our your survey via the summit app.

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