The Benefits of Alarm Shelving
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Alarm shelving is an important tool to help operators manage nuisance alarms. It is intended to temporarily hide alarms that the operator feels are irrelevant or distracting, thus enabling them to maintain focus on alarms that require their attention. The presence of nuisance alarms can desensitize operators causing them to ignore alarms and to misdiagnose the situation. It is also a common contributor to alarm management incidents. With the release of the IEC 62682 standard “Management of alarm systems for the process industries,” alarm shelving has become required control system functionality. Despite this development, many owner and operators are hesitant to allow their control room operators to shelve alarms.
