Alarm management life cycle provides process insight
Alarm management can simply be defined as “efficient handling of alarms.” However, this statement has a different meaning to different people. For a process operator, alarm management means “seeing alarms only relevant to him at any given time.” For a control engineer, it means “speed at which alarms are generated, notified, distributed and stored.” And for a plant manager, it could mean “effective notification and distribution of alarms in addition to efficient alarm history retrieval.”
To understand alarm management, we need to understand the “life cycle” of an alarm. The “life cycle” of an alarm is divided into the following stages:
Alarm generation
Alarm notification and distribution
Alarm acknowledgement
Alarm escalation and re-alarming
Alarm storage
Alarm changes
Alarm history retrieval and reporting.
Each of these stages caters to distinct alarm behaviors and can be managed in a variety of ways.