Open AccessAlarm Audit and Enforcement: Automating the Integrity of Alarms for Manufacturing Systems
Author(s) -
Thomas Ault,
Lianguo Yang
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
iop conference series. materials science and engineering
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1757-899X
pISSN - 1757-8981
DOI - 10.1088/1757-899x/521/1/012008
Subject(s) - alarm , audit , computer science , process (computing) , work (physics) , reliability engineering , risk analysis (engineering) , control (management) , computer security , manual fire alarm activation , enforcement , engineering , business , mechanical engineering , accounting , artificial intelligence , law , political science , aerospace engineering , operating system
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.