WRITING ALARM MESSAGES7 TIPS LEADING TO BIG IMPROVEMENTS

ALARM MESSAGES COME IN MANY FORMS

With ISA 18.2, alarm messages are split into multiple components, such as:

PURPOSE

GUIDANCE

TAG COMMENT

TIME-TO-RESPOND

CONSEQUENCE

AND MANY MORE…

WHAT FOLLOWS ARE SIMPLE TIPS TO MAKE MEANINGFUL IMPROVEMENTS IN WRITING

ALARM INFORMATION, INCLUDING TAG COMMENT (24 CHARACTERS)

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Think from the operators perspective:

WHAT DO THEY NEED TO KNOW?

WHAT INFORMATION OR KNOWLEDGE DO THEY HAVE AVAILABLE?

TIP 1 – BE RELEVANT TO THE OPERATOR

The contentMUST BE RELEVANT

OPERATORS ARE ACTUALLY BUSY

ACHIEVING THE GOALIS WHAT MATTERS

Strip trivial information to keep focus on what

matters

Nothing more, nothing less

In other wordsKEEP IT SIMPLE & TO THE POINT

TIP 2 – BE CONCISE

EVERYTHING SHOULD BE MADEAS SIMPLE AS POSSIBLE

BUT NOTSIMPLER

TIP 3 – BE CONSISTENT

There are several ways to say the same thing:

TANK 1 IS APPROACHING HH LIMIT

TANK 1 IS REACHING HH LIMIT

T1 APPROACHING HH

MESSAGES SHOULD BE CONSISTENT AND BE BASED ON STANDARD, AGREED UPON

TERMINOLOGY, THAT IS KNOWN AND USED BY ALL OPERATORS

TIP 4 – BE OUTCOME FOCUSED

Alarm messages should be focused on telling the operator what the problem is, and then guide the

operator towards the appropriate action

EVERY ALARM SHOULD BE THE RESULT OF AN OPERATOR ACTION;EACH OPERATOR ACTION SHOULD BE A RESULT OF:

AN ALARM,MANAGEMENT REQUEST,

ORIMPROVEMENT OPPORTUNITY

TIP 5 – EASILY READABLE

This is self-explanatory

Alarm messages should be presented in a manner that is clear, well structured, quick and simple to read.

WE DO NOT WANT THE OPERATOR TO LOOSE VALUABLE SECONDS DUE TO POOR

LANGUAGE IN THE MESSAGE

Alarms usually display the following information:

DATE/TIME STAMP

Example:On some HMI systems, the operator will always be shown the tag-name, so in that case we should be sure not to include the tag-name in the message to ensure that we’re not duplicating the same information

SEVERITY

TAG NAME

ALARM MESSAGE (TOPIC)

TIP 6 – DUPLICATION OF CONTENT

We should ensure to not duplicate information already provided to the

operator

Operators know their facility in extreme detail, from an operations perspective...

TIP 7 – OPERATOR LANGUAGE/TERMINOLOGY

KNOW THE LANGUAGE OF THE OPERATORS AND WRITE ALARMS

INTHE SAME LANGUAGE

THE CORE GOAL OF ALARM SYSTEMS IS TO SUPPORT THE

OPERATOR:It is critical that alarms are written in a manner that

matches the operator’s language, training and mental model

CONCLUSION

DON’T BE TOO SET ON ONLY ACHIEVING THE ISA18.2 NUMERICAL TARGETS WHEN MANAGING AN ALARM SYSTEM

SMALL IMPROVEMENTS AND SIMPLICITY IN ALARM MESSAGES TRANSLATE TO SIGNIFICANT IMPROVEMENTS IN AN OPERATORS DAILY WORK

IMPROVED ALARMS WILL ALWAYS BE APPRECIATED BY YOUR OPERATORS

THANK YOU!

ALARM METRICS

HAZOP STYLE ALARM WORKSHOPS

IMPLEMENTING ALARM MANAGEMENT

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