Searching for the momentous- making it right
I'm not sure if you had time to attend the recent ISA show in Houston. I want to highlight a couple of technical presentations that were given there.
These two papers were presented by Eli Lilly, and showed a vision of alarm management that has been absent from a lot of the papers and presentations you will see given on the topic. In case you've missed a lot of the rhetoric lately on this topic, you can find it quickly by doing some internet searches. In a nutshell- most of the papers written focus around reducing alarms. I will tell you that is not the answer. It is certainly desirable when there are too many alarms, but once reduced- you still have an alarm problem. So, let's look at it through the eyes of two who have a different viewpoint.
The first was by Ryan I.- a young engineer at Lilly. Ryan was working in a unit that was replacing an older control system with a new one. This offered him the unique opportunity to set up the alarm system. In most plants that usually means that you put the alarms back the way they were so you don't confuse the operators when it comes on line. Ryan's hallmark statement on alarm system design was "I figured that it cost the same amount of time and money to design it wrong as it did to design it right. So I thought- why not just design it right to start with?" Stepping off that platform, Ryan took the opportunity to review previous alarm data- after all they weren't changing the process- just the system- and use that information to decide where alarms were hindering rather than helping the operator, and to fix that design.
Throughout his presentation, Ryan pointed to findings as he investigated why the alarm system worked the way it did, and things that they did to resolve issues. He pointed to the fact that this alarm system now works so well that when there's an alarm- the operators want to know why. And the operators have become the keepers of the alarm system. In fact, any alarm is a rarity. He quoted a new normal alarm rate of ten per day!
A later paper by Alan P. of Lilly expanded the thought process further. Alan's premise was that if you are only documenting the alarm system, and trying to reduce the number of alarms, you are missing the opportunity to find process discoveries. He called this striving for the momentous. He further denounced "trivializing the momentous, and complicating the obvious." Alan's greatest observation was that in normal operation, (once the alarm system was in order) that each alarm was an opportunity for process discovery.
This is a phenomenal breakthrough in alarm management thinking. While most of the efforts today assume that every alarm system is broken and needs a savior to come to the rescue (on a white horse?), Alan's observation takes us to the next phase of engineering thought on the subject. That level is the one we arrive at when we realize that we've fixed all the alarms, and we still have an alarm problem. In fact- we realize that every alarm is essentially a problem. Thus, our real goal should be NO ALARMS! That sure knocks the legs out from EEMUA's one alarm every ten minutes theory.
So, let's drift into that thought pattern for a minute- because a walk through history reveals that we were getting close to being there at one time, and decided that to go any further required new technology. The problem we identified was that we would need one of those new digital control systems. Our reasoning (seemed sound at the time) was that digital information transfer would resolve all of our instrumentation and communication issues and allow us to take on difficult process issues without the inherent shortcomings of analog instruments.
From an alarming standpoint, that's why we put alarm logging printers on those systems. We wanted to log each alarm, and use that information to investigate just why it happened. Once we knew that, we could prevent it from ever happening again. Alarms would be VALUABLE to our system. The vision was that we would make adjustments to the instruments, the system, and the process so that such alarms would soon disappear. Alternatively, we might discover a process anomaly that required us to use real engineering to figure out how better to produce the product, or how to avoid allowing the process to get into that particular state of upset ever again. And we wouldn't have to tweak potentiometers to make that happen. We'd just write new equations, and setpoints to the digital system.
I'm sure that many of you old-timers can recall having similar thoughts in the past. So, perhaps it's not new- just able to be considered once again- twenty years after the fact of its having been a pertinent thought.
Here's the key- if you're going to do some work on your alarm system, and you decide that a rationalization is what is called for- don't just document the current system. Documentation of a broken alarm system is worthless. Take the opportunity to fix it right. OK- it does cost a little more, because you actually have to look at the design of the unit. But the pay off is immediate, and creates a better work environment.
Look for the momentous opportunity when you are given it. Make your activities produce value. Otherwise, you'll be like a lot of others who wondered what you received for the flurry of activity that took place when you spent all that money and time. Hemmingway said it best: Don't mistake movement for action.
These two papers were presented by Eli Lilly, and showed a vision of alarm management that has been absent from a lot of the papers and presentations you will see given on the topic. In case you've missed a lot of the rhetoric lately on this topic, you can find it quickly by doing some internet searches. In a nutshell- most of the papers written focus around reducing alarms. I will tell you that is not the answer. It is certainly desirable when there are too many alarms, but once reduced- you still have an alarm problem. So, let's look at it through the eyes of two who have a different viewpoint.
The first was by Ryan I.- a young engineer at Lilly. Ryan was working in a unit that was replacing an older control system with a new one. This offered him the unique opportunity to set up the alarm system. In most plants that usually means that you put the alarms back the way they were so you don't confuse the operators when it comes on line. Ryan's hallmark statement on alarm system design was "I figured that it cost the same amount of time and money to design it wrong as it did to design it right. So I thought- why not just design it right to start with?" Stepping off that platform, Ryan took the opportunity to review previous alarm data- after all they weren't changing the process- just the system- and use that information to decide where alarms were hindering rather than helping the operator, and to fix that design.
Throughout his presentation, Ryan pointed to findings as he investigated why the alarm system worked the way it did, and things that they did to resolve issues. He pointed to the fact that this alarm system now works so well that when there's an alarm- the operators want to know why. And the operators have become the keepers of the alarm system. In fact, any alarm is a rarity. He quoted a new normal alarm rate of ten per day!
A later paper by Alan P. of Lilly expanded the thought process further. Alan's premise was that if you are only documenting the alarm system, and trying to reduce the number of alarms, you are missing the opportunity to find process discoveries. He called this striving for the momentous. He further denounced "trivializing the momentous, and complicating the obvious." Alan's greatest observation was that in normal operation, (once the alarm system was in order) that each alarm was an opportunity for process discovery.
This is a phenomenal breakthrough in alarm management thinking. While most of the efforts today assume that every alarm system is broken and needs a savior to come to the rescue (on a white horse?), Alan's observation takes us to the next phase of engineering thought on the subject. That level is the one we arrive at when we realize that we've fixed all the alarms, and we still have an alarm problem. In fact- we realize that every alarm is essentially a problem. Thus, our real goal should be NO ALARMS! That sure knocks the legs out from EEMUA's one alarm every ten minutes theory.
So, let's drift into that thought pattern for a minute- because a walk through history reveals that we were getting close to being there at one time, and decided that to go any further required new technology. The problem we identified was that we would need one of those new digital control systems. Our reasoning (seemed sound at the time) was that digital information transfer would resolve all of our instrumentation and communication issues and allow us to take on difficult process issues without the inherent shortcomings of analog instruments.
From an alarming standpoint, that's why we put alarm logging printers on those systems. We wanted to log each alarm, and use that information to investigate just why it happened. Once we knew that, we could prevent it from ever happening again. Alarms would be VALUABLE to our system. The vision was that we would make adjustments to the instruments, the system, and the process so that such alarms would soon disappear. Alternatively, we might discover a process anomaly that required us to use real engineering to figure out how better to produce the product, or how to avoid allowing the process to get into that particular state of upset ever again. And we wouldn't have to tweak potentiometers to make that happen. We'd just write new equations, and setpoints to the digital system.
I'm sure that many of you old-timers can recall having similar thoughts in the past. So, perhaps it's not new- just able to be considered once again- twenty years after the fact of its having been a pertinent thought.
Here's the key- if you're going to do some work on your alarm system, and you decide that a rationalization is what is called for- don't just document the current system. Documentation of a broken alarm system is worthless. Take the opportunity to fix it right. OK- it does cost a little more, because you actually have to look at the design of the unit. But the pay off is immediate, and creates a better work environment.
Look for the momentous opportunity when you are given it. Make your activities produce value. Otherwise, you'll be like a lot of others who wondered what you received for the flurry of activity that took place when you spent all that money and time. Hemmingway said it best: Don't mistake movement for action.
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