Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.

HMI SCADA-08
Best Practices
for Alarm
Management

Rob Kambach
HMI/Supervisory Market Spectrum
Machine Process Plant Site Enterprise

• Ease of Use • Larger Tag/Graphic • Server Consolidation • Multi-Plant • Monitoring

• Process Visualization Counts • Standard Equipment HMI/Common Control • Operational Centers
Needs/Aspects

• Basic Alarming • Graphic Standards Model Room • PIMS (Information

• Short Term History • Extensible Vis (Client • Thin Client • Large Engineering Management)
Key

• Device Connectivity Controls) • Centralized Historian Teams

• Basic Reporting • Fault Tolerance • Common Standards
• Basic Alm • Situational Awareness
Management • Advanced Alarm
Management
Scale/Cumulative
Products

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Current state around alarming
Configured alarms per operator

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Economical impact
Affecting several crucial areas of plant operations:
- Reduces the operational effectiveness
- Economical impact: Unnecessary plant shutdowns (in the USA alone this
costs $20 Billion a year on productivity)
- Poor alarm management also causes losses in product quality, danger to
population and environment and/or image loss of a respective company

Source : ASM Consortium

Abnormal Situation Management

Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.

Safety Impact

Texaco Pembroke 1994

Bunkfield Oil Depot Piper Alpha North sea 1988

Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.

Why did the number of alarms
increase?
• Automation evolution (including fieldbus) brought more accessible
information per sensor/actuator
• Alarms are easily configurable now (no more wired) -> no real cost
at engineering or operating time to add alarms
• People (SI/EPC) tend to believe more is better : nothing can happen
without notice if everything has an attached alarm

Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.

A set of standards and guidelines
● EEMUA 191, Alarm systems a guide to design
● Namur NA 102 Worksheet, Alarm Management
● NPD YA 711, Principles for alarm design (Norwegian petroleum doctorate
slowly adopted throughout Europe as the standard)
● VDI/VDE Guideline 3699 (process control using monitors)
● ISA S18.02, Management of alarm systems for the process industry
● IEC 62682 Alarm Management Standard

API RP-1167
Alarm
Management
For Pipeline
Systems

ANSI/ISA 18.2
Management
of Alarm
Systems for
the Process
Industries

Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.

 IEC 62682 Alarm Standard Worldwide
● Introduces vendor neutral terms
● Shelving, Initiated by Operator to temporarily suppress an Alarm
● Suppressed by Design, Mechanism implemented within that prevents the
transmission of the alarm indication to the operator based on Plant State
● Out of Service, is the state of a alarm indication that is suppressed, typical
manually, for reasons such as maintenance
These map to our system as Shelving, Plant State and Inhibit or Disabled
● The standard requires that all alarms currently shelved, suppressed by
design and out of service can be listed. Alarms must be under access
control to be placed out of service. If an alarm is placed out of service it
must be recorded.

Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.

Situational Awareness HMI and Alarms Combined
Traditional HMI
What Happened ? Critical
Alarm
Tool
Grid
Process
Impact Tool
Trends
Knowledge Operational
SA Graphics Operator Limits
Knowledge Alarm
What is Happening ? Operator Boundaries

Interpretation time
Alarm Time
- 40 %

Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.

Advanced Graphics, EEMUA, ISO
Identify what type of information and support people
need in order to be able to deal successfully with
unanticipated events (Higher) Plant Operating Target
(Fewer) Planning Constraints

(Fewer) Operational Constraints

APG Efforts
Days per Year

Recovery of
3-8% of Capacity
Plant Capacity Limit

< 60% 95% 100%

Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential. Daily Production
 2014 System Platform Alarm Enhancements
Before 2014…….you could build your own alarm App…but you needed the know how.

Setup the logger

Define Queries
Configure/Connect Databases
Have SQL Server SA
Passwords
Wire the Runtime to
History
Repeat all the same for
Visualization
Setup the logger as service

Released January 2014

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2014 delivers this experience…

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Applying the guidelines
1.Alarm Priorities
2.The system shall only represent four active alarm priorities:
Priority 1 Critical (only Safety and Emergency related)
Priority 2 High
Priority 3 Medium
Priority 4 Low
Priority 5 Events and logging only no Alarms.
1.The four priorities and the impact to the business and operation.
2.Ranking and economical scale:

Operational risk of the Alarms

Define response times for each category

Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.

Severity indication on alarm borders
Severity 1 response time < 5min

Severity 2 response time < 30min

Severity 3 response time < 60min Specification

Severity 4 response time < 120min

Wonderware
Implementation

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Global Priority to Severity mapping

One location to change and customizable image…

Default Alarm Border Icons

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Global defined styles for alarm colors
and borders
One place to change how graphics represent Alarms

Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.

Alarm Border Animation Runtime

Global Icons

Global Styles

Auto Configuration for Field_Attributes or Objects

Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.

Possible Alarm Border States on Graphics
2014 R2
Alarm Border
Can represent multiple alarms
Its show the Alarms in the following
order of importance
Using something we call “Most Urgent”

Un_Acked Severity 1,2,3,4

Acked 1,2,3,4
Unacked RTN Normal 1,2,3,4
In Alarm Acked Was in Alarm Disabled or Inhibited Shelved Silenced / Shelved 1,2,3,4
Un-Acked Flashing Returned to Normal (Engineering) (Operator) Suppressed Disabled, Inhibited 1,2,3,4
Un-Acked (Operator, Silence 1,2,3,4
PlantState)

Transitions
Yes Yes No Yes Yes logged
In Alarm
Yes Yes No Yes, tab No Summary
Shelved Display

Indicated in
Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes alarm
border
Aggregated/
Yes No
Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.
No Yes Yes Counted
Alarm Aggregation Counted and totalized by Area or Object

Active count
On any level
In the model

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2014 R2 Release System Platform

If for 2014
we delivered this….

Releasing October 2014

Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.

2014 R2 delivers this:
Scalability Factor times 10
Clients with out of the box experience
Shelving and plant state suppression built-in

Alarm App

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Update Clients: Runtime
• Tabbed filtering
• Actual alarm indicators on Tabs
• Ack buttons
• And styles and themes setup as default

Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.

Updated Clients: Historical
• Defined with the standard Themes and Styles colors
• Fonts best Practices HMI Standards
• Dynamic Filter tabs
• Group By functionality

History Blocks
Extra Columns
Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.
Severity Indication in Runtime and
History mode within the Alarm Symbols

Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.

Widgets for Alarming

Area Indicator Object or Device Indicator Navigation Badges

Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.

Alarm Shelving Shelving from Alarm Client or Scripting
Who Can Shelve?
Mandatory: a Reason and duration
Audit trail logged to Historian
Any configured alarm can be shelved
What can be shelved? Only enabled Alarms can be shelved
Alarm Border integration

Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.

 Alarms Plant State-Based Suppression
● Global definition of plant states

● Area object based suppression of alarms

● Individual state on the area object has an I/O Extension
Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.
Added Operational Permissions

● Who can Shelve

● Who can Inhibit / Disable
● Who can change Plant State
● Who can modify Alarm and Event
configurations

Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.

Operational organization of alarms
Engineering Inhibit / Disabled
Based on Maintenance

Operator Shelving
Based on temporary
conditions

PLC Plant State

Based on production
Conditions

Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.

Unified Attribute Editor
Same UI on any object
to manage alarms
Duplicate Function
Bulk Editing
Smart Filter
Icons that show what
Features are On or Off

Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.

New High Performance Storage and
Retrieval
● Choice upon install logging to legacy DB A2ALMDB
● 100 messages per second

● History Blocks same as process data

● 2000 messages per second

Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.

Release of WW Alarm Analyst Q1 2015

Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.

Wonderware Alarming 2.0 Differentiators

● Easy to Use
● Compliance to regulations and best practices around alarming
● Alarm rationalization In context with Situational Awareness…OUT OF
THE BOX!!!!!
● Scalable by 10X , 2000 messages per second sustained
● Redundancy built-in as an option
● Most Robust system in the industry using Store & Forward
● Highest throughput in the industry
● Completely re-invented and revamped Alarm system to deal with the
demands, flexibility and safety requirements of today’s and tomorrow’s
projects
Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.
 Monthly
Approach Alarm Rationalization Plant State
Active
Annual When
Analysis of Current Situation 1
Operator Alarm Alarm Design
Input Adviser
Plant State
1
Shelving
2
Alarm Philosophy
Operational
Implementation Determine Fleeting
Standing
Review Why Limits Eliminate Fleeting
Suppression
Alarms Document Noise Frequent
2 Implement
Bad Actors
3
Alarm Performance Assessment
Wonderware
Software Alarm Determine Fleeting
Adviser Determine Frequent
Determine Standing
Determine Bad Actors 4
Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.
Alarm Adviser - Overview
● Common UI/UX
● Up to 10 years of historic alarm data
● Multiple sites/plants/systems
● Connects to
● Vijeo Citect
● InTouch
● System Platform
● ClearSCADA
● Foxboro

Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.

Configuration – Priority & Severity

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Dashboard

The dashboard is
available to all users

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Dashboard – User defined KPIs
EEMUA 191 Standards

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Alarm Activity – Severity Distribution

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Frequent Alarms

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Long Standing Alarms - Longest

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This makes a strong case …
to manage 95% of your alarms in System Platform

• Typical 80% is low, 15% is medium, 4% is High, 1% Critical

• Meaning 95% of your alarms do not cause a shutdown
• By moving these alarms out of the PLC, you create room and make
management a lot easier Benefits:
Centralized Configuration
One approach to Shelving and Plant State
Redundancy Built-in
Out-of-the box Styles and Alarm Borders
Aggregation Built-in
Counting Built-in
Severities Built-in (used for rationalization)
Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.
Where does this give you the advantage?

Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.

 Thank you!

©2015 Schneider Electric. All Rights Reserved.

Wonderware Conference.
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are owned by Electric
Schneider confidential.
Electric Industries SAS or its affiliated companies or their respective owners.
Wonderware Conference. Schneider Electric confidential.