An alarm system is often the first line of defense in avoiding a serious process incident, and yet too often it is ineffective when it is needed most. Alarm floods, nuisance alarms and high numbers of standing alarms can overwhelm plant operations personnel, especially in response times to process upsets.

Most process plants do not need more alarms, they need an improved alarm management strategy to identify and implement essential alarms, whilst seeking to eliminate unnecessary ones.

In this article, Hiroaki Tanaka explores the benefits of implementing an effective rationalization strategy to enhance operational performance.

It evaluates the protection hierarchy, and independent levels of protection. It also examines the need to identify the top ten bad actors, and provides a comprehensive analysis of the steps required to rationalize the Alarm Database.

Read the full article in this month’s edition of Chemical Processing.