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TiPS Newsletter - March 2006
The Seminars are Coming!
April 20, 2006 - Houston, TX - 9:00am-4:00pm
Improve Plant Performance More Quickly and Easily with Integrated
Alarm and Plant Performance Data
TiPS and ExperTune are coming to Houston to present a one-day seminar
covering the unique ways to combine alarm and loop performance data
to speed diagnosis of plant and operations troubles. Come hear real-world
applications and techniques for integrating alarm and plant performance
data that will help you improve alarm quality, control room clarity,
and plant performance.
There is no charge for the seminar and we're providing breakfast
and lunch!
Click
here for more information and to register
Protect Your Alarming Investment
Don't you hate it when you set up your TiVo to record the game and
then your kid cancels the recording so they can watch MTV Cribs?
It wasn't malicious, but you sure did stress over that start time...
The same thing can happen to your alarm system.
You spend time and effort researching and changing alarm activation
points, priorities, annunciation paths. Don't let change creep back
into the configuration. Give yourself a way to protect those changes.
You will probably not be able to prevent changes altogether, but
it is a good idea to implement some way to patrol or check for changes
and allow or disallow them.
A base level of protection is a simple change management process.
You probably already have an MOC policy in place. Just integrate
alarm settings into the procedure. As noted, an MOC policy may not
prevent change, but it does create an audit trail to use in review
of current settings against the approved design.
The MOC process might be automated, replacing a paper intensive
process with an electronic system. This can widen acceptance and
adoption of MOC procedures and accelerate change review.
Automated auditing offers another layer of protection. This is a
system for automatically comparing currently active alarm settings
to the authorized configuration. Descrepancies are flagged for review
and can be accepted and adopted as part of the authorized settings
or rejected.
A high-level solution involves automated enforcement, in which the
MOC system will force the control system to conform with the authorized
settings. This might be done with or without human intervention.
This solution requires caution, because most DCS systems allow control
settings to be changed adhoc at the controller OR in the configuration
database. Unless the MOC system is able to read changes in the controller
AND changes in the DCS configuration database, it will only have
a partial picture of current operating state.
Automated enforcement is potentially hazardous to the stability
to the controller, as it is a direct write into the controller database.
Use with caution.
Alarm MOC helps protect your investment in alarm design and helps
ensure that updated alarm settings continue to supply their intended
benefit.
Agree? Disagree? Post your thoughts on
alarmmanagement.com
Control Global White Paper Alert
Alarm management is a relatively new concept in automation. Although
it appears to be very straightforward - "Got an alarm problem?
Fix the alarm system." It's really not that simple. Alarms
are a symptom, they're not the problem. In reality, the far-reaching
impact of managing alarms is proving to be integral if not crucial
to the pursuit of operations excellence and to fully leveraging
your investment in operations assets and personnel.
Read
it now
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