Alarm Management Handbook

Asset Performance
and Alarm Management
Handbook
2008
Performance
and Alarm
Management
AssetAsset
Performance
and Alarm
Management
2008 2008
Technology has created an alarm
management crisis
Here’s what needs to be done to solve the problem
L. O’Brien, ARC Advisory Group, Dedham, Massachusetts
A
larm management is one of the most undervalued and
underutilized aspects of process automation. In most
cases, alarm systems do not receive the attention and
resources that are warranted. This is understandable, because
alarming appears to be a deceptively simple activity. Many plants
still use the alarm management philosophy developed by the
engineering firm when the plant was built.
The age of digital process control transformed the role of the
alarm. In the days of hardwired controls and alarms, engineers
were very stingy with alarms, in part because each alarm point had
a cost. The primary issue with alarm systems is there is too much
information for an operator to assimilate and act on. Ten years
ago, it cost about one thousand dollars to add an alarm.
Current automation systems have essentially eliminated the
cost of adding more alarms and, therefore, the incentive to limit
or rationalize their number. With the potential for every measured
point to have a high alarm, low alarm and other variations, there
are often more alarm points then there are measured variables in
the process. In many cases, it is easier to add another alarm rather
than rationalize existing alarms.
Multiple sources of alarms and alerts compound the
issue. Alarms and alerts in plants come from many sources, not
Best practices for alarm management require distinctions
between alarms and alerts. Alerts provide a notification mechanism, but do not necessarily require immediate action. Alarms
are used as a warning, and should always require operator action.
In short, alarms are not alerts. Alarms are not alarms unless they
require operator action.
Drive toward alarm management operational excellence requires continuous improvement approach.
The push for operational excellence (OpX) in plants is also driving
the need for more effective alarm management (Fig. 1). Plants
are operating closer to their limits than ever before, and users are
continuously looking for new ways to increase OpX by reducing
downtime, increasing productivity and implanting real-time performance management (RPM) strategies for their plants. Effective
alarm management strategies are a key component in achieving
all of these goals. The need for effective alarming is increasing
dramatically in spite of the fact that most alarm systems are not
effectively used. As alarm systems become less effective, they
diminish the effectiveness of all automation.
Manufacturing is moving from a demand-limited situation
toward a capacity-limited situation. This forces manufacturing
assets to run close to or at their design limits, which means there is
not much time to respond when there is a problem. A growing void
of experienced operators who understand the process well enough
to know when there is a problem and how to react also exists. Even
experienced operators are finding it difficult to track the condition
of the process because of abstraction levels introduced by increased
levels of automation complexity and sophistication.
just the DCS. Quality systems, plant asset management (PAM)
systems and condition monitoring systems are all examples of
sources that provide their own unique set of alarms that must be
managed in the context of the entire automation schema. Safety
and regulatory requirements have also added to the alarm load.
Alarms are a signal to the operators that they should intervene
in the process operation to correct a condition in the plant and return the process to
a normal state or to prevent the process
from going into an abnormal/unsafe condition. It is the first hard layer in a multilayered safety strategy. Operators should view
alarms in the context of the overall plant
operation. It makes no sense, for example,
for an operator to have to respond to an
alarm for low flow when the pump controlling the flow is shut down for maintenance.
Alarms that function as they should alert
the operator to a potential problem, inform
the operator of the nature of the problem
Fig. 1 The correlation of operational excellence to alarm management.
and guide the operator toward a course of
corrective action.
HYDROCARBON PROCESSING April 2008
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Asset Performance and Alarm Management 2008
Alarm management justification must rest on a solid
business case. Justifying the cost of an alarm management
program can be challenging. Operations and engineering realize
that alarm management is a serious issue, but often have trouble
convincing senior-level plant management that they should invest
in an advanced alarm management strategy. Justification should be
approached from a business case standpoint, and alarm management should be looked at not as a technology, but as a business
enabler and risk management investment (Table 1). When implementing an alarm management strategy, the goals and objectives
of that strategy must be clearly communicated to all the staff who
are involved, including operations, engineering and plant management. Commitment from plant management is especially crucial
to a successful alarm strategy implementation.
Lack of an alarm management strategy can cost
you plenty. According to research across the industry, lack of an
effective alarm management strategy has a direct negative impact on
plant operations, performance, profitability and safety. For example,
in the regulated industries, a deviation alarm can represent a very
significant accumulated cost of typically $2 k to $6 k per alarm or
can serve as cause to destroy a batch. In the heavy process industries,
an emergency alarm that escalates into an incident can ultimately
result in a shutdown. Unscheduled shutdowns cost the industry
between 2% and 5% of production annually.
Costs associated with poor alarm management strategies
include reduced quality, lost production time, damage to assets
Table 1. Key areas of alarm management justification
Area
Benefits
Safety
Reduced risk of human injury and incidents
Unplanned downtimeAvoid plant shutdown, lost product and associated
costs
Information management
Avoid nuisance alarms, improved fault tracing
Role of the operatorGive operator more time to focus on the process,
creating knowledge workforce
and endangerment to human life. According to the Abnormal
Situation Management Consortium (ASM), lack of an alarm
management strategy costs the US petrochemical industry losses
of $10 to $20 billion per year (Table 2).
According to insurance industry estimates, the automation
industry is experiencing over $2 billion per year in equipment
damage, which can be directly reduced by implementing an effective alarm management strategy. According to the HSE 166 study,
the typical cost of a plant incident can range from $100,000 to $1
million, with the refining industry averaging a major incident once
every three years that costs an average of $80 million. The Nexus
Engineering study on refinery operations indicates that one week
of unscheduled downtime can wipe out an entire year’s worth of
benefits generated by advanced process control (APC). These are
all powerful metrics for developing a solid business case to justify
the cost of alarm management strategy implementation.
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Asset Performance and Alarm Management 2008
Table 2. The cost of ineffective alarm management
Deviation alarms in regulated industries
$2 k to $6 k per alarm
US petrochemical industry losses:
$10–$20 billion
Annual automation industry equipment damage:
Over $2 billion
Typical cost of unplanned incident:
$100 K to $1 million
Major incidents in refining industry average cost:
$80 million
Table 3. EEMUA guidance of alarm frequency
acceptability
Long-term average alarm rate
in steady operation
Acceptability
More than one per minute
Very likely to be unacceptable
One per two minutes
Likely to be over-demanding
One per five minutes
Manageable
Less than one per 10 minutes
Very likely to be acceptable
Transforming the role of the operator. Operators are
underutilized, and the operator of the future will play a pivotal role
in operations decision making. This requires information empowerment. Alarm management is a perfect example of this empowerment.
An alarm management system has the potential to transform the role
of the operator. A good alarm management system can free operators from doing tedious or repetitive tasks and give them more time
to focus on the process and make intelligent decisions that affect
productivity and plant performance. A sound alarm management
philosophy also allows users to capture critical events during process
upsets without being overwhelmed with nuisance alarms.
Strategies for alarm management should be based
on EEMUA guidance. The Engineering Equipment and
Materials Users Association (EEMUA) has created what ARC
believes is the definitive guide to best practices and guidelines for
alarm management. Any alarm management philosophy should
be based on these recommendations. EEMUA Publication 191
is well recognized and considered a “good industry practice”
by OSHA. Based in the UK, the EEMUA is an organization
comprised of “substantial purchasers and users of engineering
products” from industries such as oil and gas, power and refining
concerned with reducing costs through the sharing of knowledge
and resources. EEMUA is not a standards-making body, but it
does want to further development of existing standards by sharing
its knowledge with the rest of the world.
The four core principles EEMUA espouses throughout Publication 191 include usability, safety, performance monitoring and
investment in engineering. Usability ensures that the design of the
alarm system can adapt to the needs of the user and operate within
the constraints of the user. According to EEMUA, a usable alarm
system must “be relevant to the user’s role at the time, indicate
clearly what response is required, be presented at a rate the user
can deal with and be easy to understand.”
EEMUA states that if an operator has to respond to an alarm
every two minutes and it takes one minute to adequately respond
to that alarm, then 50% of the operator’s overall time is spent
responding to alarms. The huge number of alarms added to
today’s control systems also means that the operators cannot
respond effectively to abnormal situations when they arise because
they are overwhelmed with alarms.
Recommendations. End users need to explore the benefits of
developing, implementing and managing an alarm management
philosophy. Alarm strategies should also be viewed as a continuous
improvement process with guidelines and procedures for periodic
review and evaluation of alarms, and should also incorporate
EEMUA guidelines.
Supplier selection is a crucial step in the process of implementing an alarm management strategy. Manufacturers with older
legacy systems with inadequate alarm functionality should either
look to automation system suppliers to replace or upgrade their
systems or look for third-party software suppliers that can provide
add-on alarm management functions to meet their alarm management strategies. Automation suppliers need to provide their
users with alternatives that fit their specific alarm management
requirements. Above all, alarm management should be made as
easy as control strategy management is. HP
Larry O’Brien is part of the automation consulting team at
ARC covering the process industries, and an HP contributing editor. He is responsible for tracking the market for process automation systems (PASs) and has authored the PAS market studies for
ARC since 1998. Mr. O’Brien has also authored many other market
research, strategy and custom research reports on topics including process fieldbus,
collaborative partnerships, total automation market trends and others. He has been
with ARC since January 1993, and started his career with market research in the field
instrumentation markets.
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I 125
Asset Performance and Alarm Management 2008
Asset Per formance
and Alarm Management 2008
Technology Index
Alarm and event analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alarm and event management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alarm configuration management. . . . . . . . . . . .
Alarm management optimization. . . . . . . . . . . . .
Alarm management Services. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
ASM graphics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Asset reliability improvement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Asset virtualization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Calibration management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Compliant and complete alarm management. . .
Comprehensive asset management. . . . . . . . . . .
Condition manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Configuration management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Control loop performance monitoring. . . . . . . . .
Control performance management services. . . .
Device asset management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Early event detection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Effective asset management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Effective, efficient alarm management . . . . . . . .
Energy efficiency watchdog system. . . . . . . . . . .
129
130
130
131
131
132
132
133
133
134
134
136
136
137
137
138
138
140
140
141
Field device management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Inspection management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Integrated alarm management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Integrated SIS alarm management . . . . . . . . . . .
Intelligent alarm rationalization. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Intelligent asset management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Management of all plant assets. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Material balance reconciliation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Metrics and scorecards. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Operator alerts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Operator rounds management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
RCM and FMEA . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Real-time financial performance . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Reliability analytics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Risk-based inspection. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Root-cause analysis. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Sustainable alarm management . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Thickness monitoring. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Unified alarm management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
141
142
142
143
143
144
144
145
145
146
146
147
148
148
149
149
150
150
151
Licensor Index
ABB. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132, 150
Emerson. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Honeywell. . . . . 129, 130, 132, 134, 137, 138, 141, 146
INOVx Solutions, Inc.. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Intelligent Optimization. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Invensys. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131, 136, 137, 145, 148
Matrikon. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134, 140
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I April 2008 HYDROCARBON PROCESSING
Meridium . . . . . 133, 142, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150
PAS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 131, 136
Siemens AG. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142, 143, 144
Soteica . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
TiPS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Yokogawa. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129, 138, 143, 151
Asset Performance and Alarm Management 2008
Alarm and event analysis
Description: The Honeywell Alarm and Event Analysis (AEA) tool
identifies alarm system problems, enabling users to engineer and maintain
their alarm system to meet site alarm management policies and industryrecommended practices. AEA is a key component of Honeywell’s People
Effectiveness solutions designed for Abnormal Situation Management
(ASM). AEA supports managing an alarm system consistently with the
best practices identified by the ASM Consortium by providing key
metrics identified by EEMUA Publication 191, Alarm Systems, A Guide
to Design, Management and Procurement. AEA’s capabilities include:
• Statistics on alarm system performance and configuration and on
Alarm Configuration Manager enforcement actions
• Access to reports via a Web browser, with no client software
required
• Tailored view of reports through the Web browser interface, enabling
digging into details of any particular situation
• Common analyses are provided in pre-configured reports
• Application Designer Tool allowing users to modify reports and
create additional reports to meet site-specific requirements, and then use
these materials with all features of the pre-configured reports
• Analysis of disabled alarms to effectively handle dynamic changes
of state
• Alarm activity records showing complete activity for one alarm
occurrence and efficiently providing standing condition data
• Assurance that analysis of alarm duration metrics is not biased by
alarms with returns via an exclusion list for alarms without returns
• Automatic, scheduled preparation and notification of reports via
e-mail.
Benefits/economics: AEA provides analysis of alarm (and process
change) events and configuration, as well as enforcement actions of Alarm
Configuration Manager, if used at the customer site. AEA supports
periodic generation and notification via e-mail of scheduled reports to
assure alarm system performance visibility by key plant personnel. When
the site needs to find out more information, AEA provides interactive
access to analyses with the ability to select the way that information is
viewed, such as for individual consoles, specific shifts, selected alarm
types or priorities, etc. This supports identifying problem alarms requiring corrective action.
AEA provides the number of: enforcement sessions and exceptions,
the average exceptions per session, the number of suspend overrides, the
average suspend overrides, the number of enforce overrides and the average enforce overrides per session. So, essentially, users get an indication
of how stable their alarm configuration is and whether their operators are
tending to allow it to be returned to the engineered configuration.
Scalability: AEA scalability is only limited by server capacity.
Interfaces to: The AEA server collects data from the History Module or the Event Journal Collector for TotalPlant Solution, and from the
Experion PKS Alarm and Event database. Third-party collection can be
added in varying ways depending on the capability of the control system.
Commercial installations: Information not available.
References: Visit www.honeywell.com/ps for the latest news
announcements and customer success stories.
Licensor: Honeywell Process Solutions is headquartered in Phoenix,
Arizona, and has offices around the world.
Alarm and event analysis
Description: Exaplog is an event analysis package that provides tools
for managers, engineers and supervising operators to analyze plant historical logs. Exaplog uses trend graphs to measure alarms and events, and
uses pie charts or tables to analyze event-type distributions to identify
and reduce unimportant/consequential alarms and to identify and
improve inefficient operation sequences.
The event balance trend (EBT) shows the numerical balance between
process requests (events such as alarms and messages) and operator actions
(such as tag mode and setpoint changes), and the relative timings of event
and operation peaks (indicators of process stability and controllability).
Supported platforms: Exaplog can extract and evaluate alarms
and events from Yokogawa’s CENTUM family of control systems,
Exaquantum Process Information Management system, Honeywell’s
TDCS3000 and Emerson’s Delta-V.
Scalability: Exaplog has the capacity to hold data over several years
and evaluate 1,000,000 events per month and 150,000 events per day.
Exaplog can be implemented on multiple systems simultaneously.
Economics/benefits: Based on review of captured plant operational
data, users are able to experience substantial yearly cost savings by making
automation improvements based on industry alarming standards.1 Benefits
can be classified into two areas: savings per year attributed to increased
operator efficiency through workload reduction and savings per year
attributed to increased stability of the process units. Other costs of poorperforming alarm systems can include financial losses due to preventable
plant incidents, risk to people and environmental damage. These could
range from $100,000 to $1,000,000. Plant incidents range from lost
production to poor quality.
Commercial installations: Over 450 Exaplog licenses have been
installed at more than 200 sites in 20 countries, including clients in
refining, chemicals, power, mining and consumer packaged goods.
References: 1 Alarm Systems: A Guide to Design, Management and
Procurement, Publication No. 191, Edition 2, The Engineering Equipment and Materials Users’ Association (EEMUA), 2007, London,
England.
Blaesi, J., “No Alarm—Alarm and Event Reduction Through Structured Elimination,” Proceedings of ISA Houston, October 2003.
Blaesi, J., “No Alarm—No Manipulation: Operation Improvement
for Plant Stability,” Proceedings of Texas A&M Instrumentation Symposium, January 2004.
“VigilantPlant Alarm Management Strategies,” ARC white paper,
January 2005.
Licensor: Yokogawa Electric Corporation, headquarters in Tokyo,
Japan with regional headquarters in Singapore, Amersfoort, The Netherlands, and Newnan, Georgia.
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HYDROCARBON PROCESSING April 2008
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Asset Performance and Alarm Management 2008
Alarm configuration management
DCS
and
other
external
interfaces
DEA
OPC
client
Knowledge
database
Relational
database
DEA
viewer
Operators
DEA
advisor
DEA
report
Engineers
Alarm and event management
Application: IntellOpt’s DEA (Decipher for Events and Alarms) is a
comprehensive alarm management system for collecting, archiving,
displaying, interpreting and managing process alarms and events (A&Es),
including metrics for alarm system performance. DEA is a very robust
application and has been field tested in conditions involving over 30,000
A&Es per day.
Strategy: The DEA package consists of five components:
• DEA_OPCClient to collect (via industry standard OPC or serial
interface) and archive A&Es in a relational database as they occur in real
time. Alarms can be filtered via attributes and station numbers, and the
alarm message can also be parsed before archiving.
• DEA_Viewer to view/scroll A&Es as they occur in real time based
on the user’s filter settings. Repeat and redundant alarms are highlighted.
• DEA_Report to analyze and study historical A&Es via Excel. Ten
standard reports are preconfigured to provide graphical and tabular
information on most frequent alarms, parent/child relationship, alarm
metrics, operator response time, etc. Other user-specific reports can be
added via VBA.
• DEA_Advisor to help identify associated/root causes and to suggest
operator actions for the condition under alarm. The knowledge base can
be gradually built via simple fill-in-the-blank-type entries as time permits
and experience is gained. As an extension, the DEA can be linked with
an historian to verify and highlight the actual cause from a list of possible
causes.
• DEA_Configurator to set up dynamic alarm suppression and reset
alarm limits based on operating modes.
Installation, interfacing and user training can normally be completed
between one and two weeks.
Economics: Benefits are improving operator productivity, identifying
malfunctioning instrumentation, raising operational safety levels and
reducing unplanned shutdowns.
Description: Honeywell’s Alarm Configuration Manager (ACM)
enables users to engineer an alarm system to meet their sites’ alarm
management policies, and then ensures the engineered configuration
remains in effect over the life cycle of the plant. With this solution, an
alarm system can contribute to improved operational effectiveness across
an entire facility.
ACM provides the capabilities to create and maintain a master alarm
database containing alarm configuration instructions and associated
information. It assists in the initial design or improving an alarm system
to support peak operator performance for safeguarding processes and the
plant. Best practices in alarm management, as identified by the Abnormal
Situation Management (ASM) Consortium, specify the need to capture
appropriate documentation about the cause, recommended response and
potential consequences of an alarm. ACM also assists in establishing the
appropriate alarm configuration.
ACM helps users deploy the new alarm system configuration and
then prevents degradation of system performance. It also enables modebased alarming via its documentation, rationalization and enforcement
functions, assisting plants in optimizing alarm system support for the
operator.
Benefits/economics:
• Provides assurance that the alarm system is effectively assisting in
keeping the plant safe and operating effectively
• Reduces the cost of engineering and managing the alarm system
configuration
• Simplifies documenting and rationalizing the alarm system and
deploying those results
• Simplifies alarm system documentation and making that information available to operators in their daily work.
Scalability: ACM is scalable to 50,000 variables (i.e., DCS points)
per ACM Manager server.
Interfaces to: The Alarm Configuration tool interfaces to control
systems via OPC Data Access (DA). It works with control systems provided by Honeywell, or may be personalized to work with those of other
suppliers having appropriate parameter access via OPC DA. The tool is
designed to deliver sustained plant performance through maximized
availability and incident avoidance.
The ACM, and other components of the ACM software, executes on
a Windows NT or Windows 2000 workstation and requires an Oracle
database management system. A management-user interface and an
operator-user interface are employed. The software operates with control
systems that have an OLE for Process Control (OPC) server.
Commercial installations: Information not available.
References: Visit www.honeywell.com/ps for the latest news
announcements and customer success stories.
Licensor: Honeywell Process Solutions is headquartered in Phoenix,
Arizona, and has offices around the world.
Commercial installations: This application has been installed
on four plants. A fifth one for pipeline operation is in progress.
Licensor: Intelligent Optimization Group, Houston, Texas, US.
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April 2008 HYDROCARBON PROCESSING
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Asset Performance and Alarm Management 2008
Services elements
Services
Alarm management
Alarm management
assessment
Alarm management
architecture
Alarm system
performance
assessment
Alarm philosophy
design
Advanced alarming
requirement
assessment
HMI philosophy
assessment
Knowledge/skills
assessment
HMI philosophy
design
Advanced alarming
design
Advanced chattering
review
Skills development
plan
Alarm management
modernization and
implementation
Alarm management
and optimization
Implement alarm
rationalization
Eliminate
chattering alarms
Implement
HMI modifications
Implement
advanced alarming
Alarm performance
management
Implement
alarm tool
Project
management
Knowledge transfer
Alarm management services
Alarm management optimization
Description: AMO-Rt is the most comprehensive real-time alarm and
event management suite available. AMO-Rt improves the safety and reliability of processing plants by optimizing alarm system performance.
Poorly functioning alarm systems have been identified as major contributing factors in many industrial accidents resulting in loss of life,
personnel injuries and billions of dollars in damages. Industry leaders
have identified alarm management improvement as an initiative with
significant benefits for enhancing plant profitability, safety and environmental performance. AMO-Rt is the only complete enterprise alarm and
event management solution providing:
• System independent functionality
• Full integration with major control systems
• Benchmarking capabilities against EEMUA and ISA guidelines
• Web-delivered, user-configurable reports and KPIs.
Key features: AMO-Rt provides a wide spectrum of features to
improve alarm systems, including:
• DCS independence—AMO-Rt works with all the major distributed control systems.
• Alarm and event analysis—Ranks, categorizes, compares and
contrasts alarm and event data against best practices and industry guidelines from EEMUA and ISA.
• Alarm flood suppression—Dynamically adjusts alarm settings
during upset conditions to prevent alarm floods from triggering events.
• Alarm shelving—Temporarily inhibits nuisance alarms, and generates reports indicating corrective action is required on bad actors.
• State-based alarm handler—Maintains and switches between
multiple sets of appropriate alarm sets, as dictated by the process state.
• Documentation and rationalization—Implements management
of change control by creating a master alarm database complete with
cause and consequence information for configured alarms and events.
• Audit and enforce—Regularly audits the alarm system for changes
and restores proper alarm settings.
Economics/benefits: AMO-Rt has been proven to reduce nuisance
alarms by over 75% which helps the operator concentrate on the alarms
needing attention rather than those not pertinent to the operation. In addition, a high-performing alarm system can prevent potential incidents.
Commercial installations: AMO-Rt has been installed globally
in a variety of industries, including oil and gas, refining, power, metals
and mining, and pulp and paper.
Reference: The Alarm Management Handbook by Eddie Habibi and
Bill Hollifield, PAS.
Licensor: PAS, Inc., with offices in Houston, Texas; St. Louis, Missouri; Amstelveen, The Netherlands; and Dubai, UAE.
Select 304 at www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com/RS
Description: Invensys’ Alarm Management Services utilize well-proven
tools and expert services for rationalizing process, system and equipment
alarms to reduce nuisance alarms dramatically and virtually eliminate alarm
storms. At the core is the Invensys Alarm Management Tool, a collection
of powerful statistical analysis tools and utilities driving a multitiered
methodology tailored to client needs of the site and the enterprise.
Benefits/economics:
• Reduced nuisance alarms and alarm floods
• Reduced startup time for new plants and units
• Improved operator decision support
• Reduced operator loading
• Reduced control system network traffic
• Improved safety and response to abnormal situations
• Reduced risk of releases, shutdowns and regulatory incidents
• Increased plant utilization, productivity and profitability
• Retained knowledge of experienced personnel beyond retirement
• Ability to better measure and monitor performance.
Methodology:
Phase 1—Alarm system performance study and report:
• Generate a baseline report of alarm system performance
• Establish performance targets based on Engineering Equipment and
Materials User Association (EEMUA) best practices
• Recommend alarm system improvement methodology.
Phase 2—Alarm system performance improvement:
• Develop alarm system philosophy
• Perform alarm rationalization and implement alarm system
changes
• Develop HMI philosophy per human-factors engineering and
design specification and implement HMI modifications
• Issue final report on performance improvements.
Phase 3—Life cycle alarm maintenance.
• Invensys maintains alarm system performance over time.
Scalability: Invensys Alarm Management Services solutions scale
from a process unit to the enterprise. Service delivery can be scaled from
one project to master plan development, roll-out and ongoing service
delivery.
Interfaces: Invensys Alarm Management Services are compatible with
I/A Series systems as well as other DCS platforms. The solutions are
platform independent, and designed to individual needs.
Commercial installations: Invensys Alarm Management Services
are used in a range of chemical, petrochemical, oil and gas, power and
other industries globally.
Reference: David Gaertner, “Bringing Nuisance Alarms Under Control,” Control Engineering, March 1, 2007.
Licensor: Invensys Process Systems with consulting, sales and project
management professionals in offices worldwide.
Select 305 at www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com/RS
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ASM graphics
Description: Honeywell’s ASM Graphics are operator graphics developed in accordance with guidelines set forth by the Abnormal Situation
Management (ASM) Consortium to assure the best operator effectiveness. Those guidelines span:
• Display contents, such as the organization of various displays, what
information to include, appropriate level of detail and relation to the
process
• Display features, such as use of color, use of symbols, information
encoding, flow and navigation
• Appropriate user guidance and training relative to the user interface
• The display development approach, such as how to identify information content required, appropriate staff and establishing appropriate
guidelines for displays.
Benefits/economics: ASM Graphics reduce the impact of abnormal
situations and improve operational effectiveness by ensuring the operator
displays are developed and provide features consistent with guidelines
established by the ASM Consortium, which are based on the Consortium’s research and expertise.
ASM Graphics assure operators:
• Are quickly aware of any abnormalities
• Can rapidly find the needed information to select and implement
corrective actions
• Have access to knowledge collected from their best operators.
Scalability: Not applicable.
Interfaces to: ASM Graphics can be designed for any applicable
Honeywell or third-party control system.
Commercial installations: Information not available.
References: Visit www.honeywell.com/ps for the latest news
announcements and customer success stories.
Licensor: Honeywell Process Solutions is headquartered in Phoenix,
Arizona, and has offices around the world.
80
OEE performance
70
60
50
40
OEE actual
OEE Target, adjusted
30
20
Oct-05 Nov-05 Dec-05 Jan-06
100
Feb-6
Mar-06 Apr-06
Availability
90
80
70
60
50
40
30
Availability actual
Availability target, adjusted
Oct-05 Nov-05 Dec-05 Jan-06
Feb-6
Mar-06 Apr-06
Asset reliability improvement
Description: System 800xA Asset Optimization (AO) optimizes the
process by collecting and analyzing real-time plant asset information and
providing it in an actionable form to the personnel who need it. AO
integrates computerized maintenance management systems (CMMSs),
device management system (DMS) calibration integration, condition
monitoring data and process system data into one common user environment.
Strategic approach/goals: Objectives include:
• Ensure plant asset availability and performance to meet or exceed
production requirements and maximize asset life
• Capture and benefit from workforce knowledge
• Minimize maintenance costs
• Increase overall equipment effectiveness (OEE)
• Consistently produce more at a lower cost.
Key product features:
• AO is offered as both a stand-alone product or integrated into System 800xA Extended Automation
• AO dashboard: Thin Web client allows view of asset data through
one access point
• Remote alerts enable you to send only critical messages, only when
necessary, to key personnel.
Return on your investment: Savings can be achieved in many
industries. In most instances, the key task is to increase optimal process
time, thereby decreasing loss of time and product quality. For example,
at a mining operation installation, maintenance of critical rotating devices
is no longer done on a scheduled basis; instead, the devices are maintained
by condition-based monitoring using 800xA AO. As a result, AO has
reduced unnecessary maintenance costs and prevented plant downtime
on several occasions shortly after it was commissioned (see figures).
Commercial installations: ABB has delivered AO to numerous
customer sites worldwide in various industries, including oil and gas,
chemical, pharmaceutical, metals and mining, and pulp and paper.
Licensors: The ABB Group of companies operates in around 100
countries and employs more than 110,000 people.
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April 2008 HYDROCARBON PROCESSING
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Asset Performance and Alarm Management 2008
Plant operations and maintenance solutions
Asset performance management
End user applications
Physical as-built
conditions
ERP
Laser scanning
Engineering Instrument
data
documents
Operation
RCM and
FMEA
Create, maintain and manage
intelligent asset model
Engineering and
CAD data
P&ID
EH&S
Virtualization
“Point Cloud”
database
3D CAD
Inspection/ Maintenance
reliability
Risk-based Reliability
inspection analytics
RCA
Inspection Calibration Thickness
mgmt.
mgmt.
monitoring
RealityLINx
Operator
rounds
Asset strategies
Metrics and
scorecards
Operations and maintenance data sources
Existing enterprise asset data systems
Drawings
ERP
Inspection/ Maintenance
reliability
data
data
EH&S
data
Operation
data
Asset virtualization
Description: In an asset-intensive operation, quick and integrated
access to current and accurate asset information including field physical
conditions significantly improves the decision-making cycle of a wide
range of daily operational and maintenance activities. It supports better
informed decisions with faster response times leading to higher levels of
productivity, safety and plant reliability. Asset virtualization consists of
two parts: the ability to walk through a precise 3-D representation of the
physical plant while sitting in your office and the ability to access all asset
information by clicking on the asset. INOVx Solutions delivers virtualization through its RealityLINx software and work practices that:
• Capture the existing plant conditions, accurate to within ¼ in.,
through laser scanning technology
• Assure asset certainty through an “intelligizing” process that compares the as-built reality with the P&ID and other drawings
• Connect the assets to enterprise data systems such as Meridium,
SAP, PI, EDMS, etc.
• Enable routine tasks to be launched directly from the virtual plant; for
example, create a maintenance work order by simply clicking on the asset
• Document common tasks and procedures with accurate 3-D representations called Knowledge Views. These can replace disjointed and
outdated 2-D isometric drawings
• Query multiple enterprise systems displaying the results in the virtual plant; for example, see all assets where the corrosion rate is greater
than 5 mils/year and the operating temperature is greater than 450°F
• Maintain the as-built conditions with less total effort as changes are
automatically inherited or propagated.
Benefits/economics: Virtualization is pervasive, positively impacting
all aspects of operations and maintenance. Besides the immediate productivity, safety and improved communications benefits, bottom-line value is
derived from increased plant reliability, smarter and more informed decisions,
and quicker reaction times to operational and maintenance situations. Payback is typically less than 1 year and has been as short as a few weeks!
Scalability: Virtualization can be justified and implemented as a point
solution; however, it yields maximum benefits as an enterprise-wide
solution. Imagine being able to have multiple experts walk through the
plant while each is physically at a different remote location. Knowledge
can be shared, ideas exchanged and collaborative decision-making occurs
that yields maximum understanding and benefits.
Interfaces to: SAP, Meridium, OSI PI, Metegrity VISIONS, Conam
PCMS, Intergraph, AVEVA, IBM Maximo and many other enterprise
systems.
Commercial installations: Over 350 asset documentation projects. Over 10 sites in North America and internationally.
Reference: “Virtualization—The Natural Way to Work,” a white
paper introducing new technology to the Petroleum Industry, 2007.
Process data
Spreadsheets/
databases
Engineering
CMMS
Financial
Legacy
systems
Handhelds
Calibration management
Description: Most manufacturing facilities have a large number of diverse
instruments, making the implementation of a comprehensive instrument- and
calibration-management program a daunting task without the support of
best-practice work processes and systems. Meridium’s Calibration Management
module enables companies to standardize, manage and optimize their instrument calibration strategies across the entire enterprise. Instrument technical
data can be classified and managed in a standard format, and the overall calibration plan and results can be captured and protected, meeting the compliance
requirements of both OSHA 1910 and ISO 9000. Meridium interfaces to
EAM systems, allowing for seamless work-process integration between maintenance, operations, engineering and inspection organizations.
Strategic approach/goals: The biggest benefit of an integrated
technology software solution is that organizations can now react much
more dynamically to changing plant conditions than was previously
possible. Meridium integrated APM initiative provides:
• KPIs enabling identification of improvement opportunities
• Automated technical analysis to identify and predict failure occurrence and cause
• Supports development and continuous improvement of operational,
surveillance, maintenance and design strategies based upon best practices,
operational history and fact-based decision support
• Drives strategies back to execution systems to close the loop and
continuously improve asset performance across the enterprise.
Interfaces: Meridium leverages critical asset performance data from
ERP, CMMS, DCS and other systems, including interfaces to SAP, IBM
Maximo, Indus Passport, Inovx and Fluke analyzers, among others.
Scalability: Meridium can be used to improve reliability of a single component at a single plant, but the true value potential lies in implementing an
APM solution across the plant and throughout the enterprise. For global
companies, Meridium can be implemented enterprise wide to allow easy
transfer of information across departments, plants and the entire company.
Economics/benefits: Calibration management, when used in
conjunction with a comprehensive APM program, conservatively yields
benefits of approximately $4 million per year for a typical 100-Mbpd
refinery. Benefit areas include reductions in lost profit opportunity costs,
avoiding abnormal incidents, staff productivity improvements reductions
in the maintenance budget, etc.1
Commercial installations: Meridium has been licensed at over
880 sites in 70 countries, including clients in the refining, chemicals,
power, mining and consumer packaged goods industries.
Reference: 1 “Quantifying the ROI of an asset performance management program,” Hydrocarbon Processing, May 2007.
Licensor: INOVx Solutions, Inc., with offices in Irvine, California,
Houston, Texas and Khobar, Saudi Arabia.
Licensor: Meridium, Inc. with offices in Roanoke, Virginia, US;
Houston, Texas, US; Dubai, UAE; Walldorf, Germany; and Perth,
Australia.
Select 308 at www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com/RS
Select 309 at www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com/RS
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Asset Performance and Alarm Management 2008
Comprehensive asset
management
Compliant and complete alarm
management
Matrikon Alarm Manager is a comprehensive alarm management
product that optimizes alarm system performance to improve plant safety,
productivity and profitability. Matrikon Alarm Manager seamlessly collects and stores all alarm and event data and automatically generates
reports that provide an accurate snapshot of a facility’s current alarm
system performance.
Matrikon Alarm Manager:
• Optimizes alarm strategies to improve operator effectiveness
• Integrates alarm and process data for thorough incident reviews
• Automates control system management of change
• Minimizes adoption cost by continuing to use familiar tools
• Identifies and eliminates chattering and predictable alarms with
real-time alarm and event analyses
• Accesses and consolidates disparate data from multiple systems for
fast, concise incident reviews
• Ensures optimal system performance with dynamic alarming
• Predicts equipment failures up to six weeks in advance, with early
event detection
• Flags frequent causes of facility outages with downtime reporting.
Benefits for operations: Improve operator work environment;
quickly identify and address problems through real-time viewing and
automatic alarm filtering; replay and annotate past incidents to ensure
optimal training.
Benefits for the control department: Integrate alarm and
process data for incident and alarm strategy reviews; consolidate alarm
and event data from all data sources; access secured alarm data from any
PC; view alarm, equipment monitoring and asset performance KPIs from
a single interface; get best-practice reports providing guided analysis and
benchmarking against industry standards.
Benefits throughout the enterprise: Share best-practices
between plants; increase profits, productivity and safety with improved
plant reliability; customize reports for specific information requirements;
automate management of change to ensure regulatory compliance and
fewer procedures.
Scalability: Matrikon Alarm Manager can be used as a point solution
or as an enterprise-wide solution that integrates with third-party software
and allows universal connectivity for enterprises with different automation systems.
Interfaces to: Virtually every major DCS, PLC and HMI package.
Commercial installations: Over 3,000 global installations.
Reference: “Alarm Management Blunders: Avoiding 12 Costly Mistakes,” white paper: http://www.matrikon.com/downloads/533/alarmmanager/index.aspx.
Licensor: Matrikon Inc., Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
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April 2008 HYDROCARBON PROCESSING
Description: Honeywell’s Asset Manager is a comprehensive asset
management component of the Experion Process Knowledge System
(PKS) unified architecture. Asset Manager connects the right people
across the supply chain to improve operational effectiveness and reduce
maintenance costs up to 30%. It continuously and efficiently monitors,
troubleshoots and maintains Experion PKS control loops and field device
assets, as well as the traditional process-based assets.
Asset Manager is based on the expert knowledge of the Abnormal
Situation Management (ASM) Consortium, a joint research and development group led by Honeywell. This group, consisting of major industrial
companies and universities, analyzes the causes of process incidents and
leads research for continuous improvement in handling plant upsets. In
addition, Honeywell teamed with participants in the PKS Advantage
program to create Asset Manager commissioning and fault detection for
their specific devices.
Early detection and notification of potential problems opens a window of opportunity for repairing or replacing faulty equipment, eliminating unplanned downtime, and reducing maintenance time and labor
costs. Asset Manager synchronizes all control and smart field devices,
including HART and Foundation fieldbus, and provides field device
synchronization with DocuMint for calibration management.
Benefits/economics:
• Quickly identifies and resolves problems related to the Experion
PKS system, control loops, field device assets and traditional processbased assets
• Enables early access to any control system asset performance and
health—not just devices
• Provides early detection and notification of faults in critical plant
assets, opening a window of opportunity for repairing or replacing faulty
equipment, eliminating unplanned downtime and reducing maintenance
time and labor costs
• Delivers 15–30% reduction in instrument and control system
maintenance costs, resulting in a maximum return on all plant assets.
Scalability: The Asset Manager database supports a maximum size
of 10,000 assets and 10 concurrent users.
Interfaces to: Asset Manager is fully integrated with the Experion
PKS. Asset Manager interfaces to smart field devices, including HART
and Foundation fieldbus, and provides field device synchronization
with DocuMint for calibration management.
Commercial installations: Information not available.
References: Visit www.honeywell.com/ps for the latest news
announcements and customer success stories.
Licensor: Honeywell Process Solutions is headquartered in Phoenix,
Arizona, and has offices around the world.
Select 311 at www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com/RS
Asset Performance and Alarm Management 2008
Automation
Integrity
PLC
Instr.D.B.
Historian
Historian
DCS
APC
SIS
Condition manager
Description: Invensys’ InFusion Condition Manager collects, analyzes and contextualizes real-time, near-time and offline diagnostics
from plant equipment and machinery. It drives actions to improve asset
performance management and to manage the appropriate operations,
engineering and maintenance actions. InFusion Condition Manager is
the condition management component for the InFusion Enterprise
Control System (ECS) and other platforms.
Benefits/economics:
• Provides early failure detection to increase asset availability, reduce
costs and avoid unnecessary downtime. Unplanned outages represent an
average of 5% in lost production.
• Avoids unnecessary maintenance and related failure risk.
• Supports continuous improvement through integrated workflow,
ensuring accurate and consistent response to developing conditions.
• Provides operations, engineering and maintenance with easy access
to current asset information for better decision-making.
• Collects and analyzes data on asset condition to help optimize asset
contribution over its full life cycle.
• Integrates with control, safety and maintenance environments.
• Leverages the latest Microsoft .NET technology.
Architecture: Collect, Analyze, Act:
Collect—Data are captured from plant historians, intelligent instruments, basic monitoring solutions and complex model-based condition
sources.
Analyze—A multivariable expert system provides the context and
knowledge management from single variable to also full active model
support. The rule-based engine also uses client-defined algorithms or
models.
Act—A comprehensive workflow engine automates collaboration via
e-mail, pager notifications, etc.
Implementation: Invensys consultants and process experts perform
a structured assessment of the challenges, opportunities and potential
ROI and develop implementation strategy. The patented InFusion
Condition Manager Configuration Tool allows the process engineer to
link and configure the monitoring parameters for equipment and measurement points, and define the analysis and the required actions and
workflow.
Interfaces: InFusion Condition Manager interoperates with Invensys
and third-party applications supported through the InFusion application
environment. Equipment condition and maintenance information is also
displayed on plant control/PLC/SCADA and safety systems through the
operator console. HMI applications, including FoxView and InTouch,
are supported.
Configuration management
Description: Integrity is a configuration management solution logging
and reporting all changes to the real-time infrastructure used to operate and
optimize the plant. Changes are presented automatically and securely via
intuitive Web-based views. Integrity provides up-to-date loop diagrams and
data flow maps operations, maintenance and safety personnel can rely on.
Originally released as DOC3000 for Honeywell TPS, Integrity brings
automated system documentation to every PLC, DCS, database and
real-time application across the plant.
Key features: Integrity enables control engineers and IT professionals to routinely increase work effectiveness by 50 –200% by providing:
• Automated loop sheet generation
• Data point cross-referencing
• Real-time data mapping
• Change tracking.
Economics/benefits: Integrity positively impacts three major aspects
within an operation: production, plant safety and maintenance.
Production. Integrity can help operators improve plant reliability by
separating critical failures from routine maintenance issues, as well as increase
their awareness by providing direct access to critical interdependencies.
Plant safety. Integrity has the ability to increase plant safety by enforcing
best practices with automated documentation and cross-referencing.
Maintenance. Integrity simplifies work processes by ensuring the accuracy of sign-offs and safety checks with a common tool across all systems.
Commercial installations: Integrity has been installed at over
500 sites globally in a variety of industries, including oil and gas, refining,
power, metals and mining, and pulp and paper.
Connectivity: PAS is continually expanding the list of available connections and presently supports the following assets:
• Foxboro
• ABB IT
• OSIsoft PI
• Aspen IP.21
• GE Fanuc
• PHD
• Bently
• Honeywell FSC
• RMPCT
• Centum CS
• Honeywell TPS
• Rockwell PLC’s
• CS3000
• Infi-90
• Rockwell SLC’s
• DeltaV
• InfoPlus
• SmartPlant
• DMC+
• Intergraph
• TDC3000
• Emerson AmS
• InTools
• Triconex
• Emerson RS3
• Invensys
• Yamatake
• Experion
• Metso Max
• Yokogawa
Commercial installations: Invensys Condition Manager is used
in power, chemical, petrochemical, oil and gas, and other industries.
Reference: “Does Your Automation System Have Integrity?” white
paper by Tom Fiske, ARC.
Reference: “Go Beyond Condition Monitoring,” Chemical Processing
Magazine, October 2007.
Licensor: PAS, Inc., with offices in Houston, Texas; St. Louis, Missouri; Amstelveen, The Netherlands; and Dubai, UAE.
Licensor: Invensys Process Systems with consulting, sales and project
management professionals in offices worldwide.
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April 2008 HYDROCARBON PROCESSING
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Asset Performance and Alarm Management 2008
Control performance management
Services
60
50
Plant performance
assessment
Services elements
40
30
20
10
0
Control performance
assessment
Control performance
utilization assessment/
control KPI
Control philosophy/
strategy assessment
Knowledge/skills
assessment
Instrument management assessment
Valve management
assessment
Control performance
modernization and
implementation
Control performance
modernization and
implementation
Detailed control per- Implementation/conformance architecture figuration control tool
Control performance
management
Control performance
architecture
Control strategy
architecture
Control improvement
implementation
Detailed loop
monitoring architecture
Skills development
implementation
Plant performance
KPI architecture
System load manager
implementation
Skills development
plan
Plant performance KPI implementation and testing
Instrument mgmt.
solution architecture
Implementation/configuration valve mgmt.
Value diagnostic
Valve management
solution architecture
Implementation/configuration instr. mgmt.
Onsite valve R&R
Plant performance
management
Instrument
diagnostic
Instrument
R&R
Knowledge transfer
1st quartile
facilities
2nd quartile
facilities
3rd quartile
facilities
4th quartile
facilities
Percentage of control loops that are performing poorly or
only fairly in representative sample of process industry
plants (115 facilities).
Control loop performance
monitoring
Description: Honeywell’s Loop Scout gives control engineers the
ability to identify control loop problems and decide how to alleviate
them. Loop Scout automatically collects configuration, event and timeseries operating data. It then suggests maintenance and engineering
actions to resolve the worst-performing loop.
Loop Scout helps plants increase production rates, and it reduces the
amount of time needed to identify and address poorly performing control
loops.
Benefits/economics:
• Focuses resources—Loop Scout’s reliability-centered maintenance
enables users to prioritize efforts and appropriately allocate resources.
• Improves economics—Periodically monitors loop performance,
combines this with optional customer-provided loop criticality, and ranks
all loops in the facility based on economic opportunity.
• Detects specific failures of PID control loops across the facility—
Shows the probability of valve stiction for every loop in the facility;
indicates the poorest-performing loops (those with the highest number
of alarms and operator interventions).
Scalability: Loop Scout is scaleable to cover any size system, and
number of systems at a site and or multisite corporations with many
geographically dispersed locations.
Interfaces to: The Loop Scout infrastructure is highly flexible and
interfaces easily to standard OPC interfaces to Honeywell and most other
third-party control systems. In cases where OPC is not viable, additional
custom interfaces have also been created to address specific issues.
Commercial installations: Information not available.
References: Visit www.honeywell.com/ps for the latest news
announcements and customer success stories.
Licensor: Honeywell Process Solutions is headquartered in Phoenix,
Arizona, and has offices around the world.
Control performance
management services
Description: Invensys Control Performance Management Services
combine advanced diagnostics with expert services to determine control
loop performance and recommend remedial actions for suboptimal
process control loops. These services bridge the gap between control
system performance and key performance indicators (KPIs). The enabler
is the Invensys Control Performance Monitor tool, a set of diagnostics
and utilities that finds, monitors and diagnoses faults that are limiting
control asset performance. Analysis includes information on process
constraints, field actuator problems, loop interaction and model identification for improved tuning.
Benefits/economics: Control Performance Management Services
can improve economic performance through:
Better control: increased production rates, quality variability reduced,
elimination of bottlenecks, reduced energy costs, higher product yields,
reduced product recycle and better operation against constraints.
Lower overhead: smoother start-up, increased run-time, higher
efficiencies, smoother operation, lower maintenance costs and longer
equipment life.
Methodology: A quarterly analysis comprises data gathered by
Invensys specialists from the previous quarter’s control performance,
driving focused actions to raise plant performance as measured by KPIs.
The results are automatically monitored and provide an explicit measure
of bottom line gain from performance improvements.
The Control Performance Monitor tool and expert periodic analysis,
form the basis for high-value diagnostics and recommendations for
quickly analyzing control loop performance relating to KPIs improvement. Quantitative metrics indicate performance as related to asset availability and utilization. Local specialists work directly with clients to
implement performance improvements.
Scalability: Invensys Control Performance Management Services
solutions are scalable from process units to enterprise-wide. Service
delivery can be scaled from one project to master plan development and
roll-out, and ongoing service agreements.
Interfaces: Invensys Control Performance Management Services can
be applied to any control system that has an OPC interface. The services
diagnose performance of all major control systems and valve manufacturers and sensors, with or without the presence of a digital fieldbus.
Commercial installations: Invensys Control Performance Management Services are used in a range of chemical, petrochemical, oil and
gas, power and other industries globally.
Licensor: Invensys Process Systems with consulting, sales and project
management professionals in offices worldwide.
Select 314 at www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com/RS
Select 315 at www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com/RS
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Computerized maintenance
management systems
Interface
Pipe/vessel
heat exchanger
Rotating
machine
Electric
facility
Instrumentation
Heat
Mechanical
exchanger
inspection
inspection
management
management
system
system
Online
monitoring
system
Electric
facility
diagnosis
Instrumentation
monitoring
diagnosis
Corrosion
monitoring
Insulation
Image
document
system
Real-time
DB
Patrol
support
system
(Plant asset
management
subsystems)
Failure occurs in
the process of
safeguard system
Failure is
detected
System internal
diagnostic
time
Safe status of the
process assured
Time for
corrective
action
Time for reaction of
the process to the
corrective action
t
Fault tolerance time
Fault tolerance time of the process
or process safety time (PST)
Early event detection
Device asset management
Description: Plant Resource Manager (PRM) is a real-time instrument device maintenance and management software package that provides a platform for advanced instrument diagnostics. PRM is an integrated software solution that unifies the monitored data from intelligent
and nonintelligent field devices running within Yokogawa’s CENTUM
and STARDOM control systems. The key feature of PRM is that it
provides easy access to data from field networks such as Foundation
fieldbus and HART, allowing integrating, managing and maintaining
these devices using a common database.
PRM provides integrated plant and device performance data, maintenance records, audit trails, device configuration with auto-device detection, historic data management, parameter comparison, advanced device
diagnostics information and access to online documentation such as
device drawings, parts lists and manuals in a client/server architecture
that provides information to multiple users within a plant facility. It
provides the ability to adjust the parameters of intelligent devices online
and allows comparing current device data to historical data.
Benefits/economics: Device asset maintenance and management
can increase maintenance productivity by transitioning traditional preventive maintenance to condition-based and predictive maintenance
activities. PRM enables centralized online monitoring of automation
assets from the beginning of the project phase, and can help reduce commissioning and startup costs from the beginning of the asset life cycle.
In that regard, maintenance costs, both needed and un-needed, for
instruments and valves can be decreased 20%, inventory costs reduced
25% and maintenance efficiency increased by 20% over traditional
methods.
Scalability: PRM is a client/server architecture scaled by number of
devices and number of clients accessing the system.
Interfaces to: CMMS I/F to IBM Maximo, GE Bently Nevada
System 1, Yokogawa Fieldmate and PIA I/F to Masoneilan FVP and SVI
II, Fisher DVC6000, Metso, and Field I/F to all Foundation fieldbus
and HART devices.
Commercial installations: Over 625 PRM installations worldwide as of October 2007 since release in 2001.
References: “Vigilance Taps Into PAM as Path to RPM,” ARC white
paper, October 2003.
“Yokogawa Unveils VigilantPlant: VigilantPlant Provides Path to
OpX for Asset Management,” ARC white paper, January 2005.
“VigilantPlant Path to Asset Excellence,” ARC white paper, February
2006.
Ajmeri, A., “Operational Excellence Through Plant Asset Management System (PAM),” Proceedings of ISA, Chicago, October 2006.
Licensor: Yokogawa Electric Corporation, headquarters in Tokyo,
Japan, with regional headquarters in Singapore, Amersfoort, The Netherlands, and Newnan, Georgia.
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April 2008 HYDROCARBON PROCESSING
Description: The Profit Suite Early Event Detection (EED) Toolkit,
developed by Honeywell and the Abnormal Situation Management
(ASM) Consortium, acts as an intelligent assistant to minimize the
number and impact of abnormal situations that can result in serious
safety, operational and economic issues for a processing plant. It does
this by providing early awareness and a measured response to abnormal
situations. Abnormal situations in a plant range from equipment-related
faults and startup/shutdown-related problems, to major process upsets
that all require human intervention.
EED applications provide early indications of an incipient event or
malfunction that is threatening key process functions essential for achieving reliability, safety, and quality and production goals. The EED Toolkit
provides a statistical modeling and application environment to identify,
localize and support reducing abnormal situations in processes and plant
equipment.
EED includes a decision-support component that helps identify and
isolate the root cause of an event. Techniques for EED can be simple,
such as operator-based alerts related to process variables or simple fault
logic models, or algorithms for detecting valve nonlinearity or oscillation
in the process.
The Profit Suite EED Toolkit, developed by Honeywell and the ASM
Consortium, was designed to allow early problem detection and enable
a planned and measured response.
Benefits/economics: Provides early detection of abnormal situations by:
• Identifying equipment or process problems prior to the first alarm
• Involving the operator in the fault localization and response selection to ensure the best knowledge and skills are applied
• Reducing the number and impact of abnormal situations that occur
by enabling earlier awareness and response
• Allowing operation with reduced margin from optimum operating
point by providing earlier detection of problems
• Integrating with Honeywell’s Profit Suite for efficient deployment
of applications on virtually any control system
• Taking advantage of the statistical modeling capabilities of Profit
Sensor Pro (Honeywell’s soft sensor modeling package) and the rich data
import, visualization and manipulation tools of Profit Design Studio,
simplifying development and deployment of EED models.
Interfaces to: The EED Toolkit modeling software operates with Microsoft Windows NT and Microsoft Windows 2000. A Pentium II equivalent
microprocessor or higher is recommended due to the computational requirements of this application. EED Toolkit online software and interface components run on Honeywell Experion Application Servers (EASs), TPS
Application Nodes, as well as Microsoft Windows NT/Microsoft Windows
2000 platforms running embedded or Oracle-based PHD.
Commercial installations: Information not available.
References: Visit www.honeywell.com/ps for the latest news
announcements and customer success stories.
Licensor: Honeywell Process Solutions is headquartered in Phoenix,
Arizona, and has offices around the world.
Select 317 at www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com/RS
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Asset Performance and Alarm Management 2008
Plan
manager
Performance
manager
Matrikon
Suite
Alarm
manager
Control
performance
monitor
Downtime
reporter
Network
security
manager
Operational
insight
Operations
logbook
Mo n
itoring
ance
, reporting, compli
Effective asset management
Matrikon Asset Management solutions and products enable operations to predict asset failures and disruptions, plan and achieve optimized
maintenance, and ensure the availability and integrity of all assets within
a standards-based technology framework. The solutions:
• Decrease maintenance costs
• Reduce equipment damage
• Ensure operational safety
• Ensure industry and government compliance.
Successful operations depend on the performance and continual availability of critical assets. These assets require frequent maintenance and to
further complicate matters, the data systems that control and monitor
these assets are also vulnerable. Asset performance must be monitored,
maintenance must be effectively scheduled and processes must be
secured.
Equipment condition monitor: The Matrikon Equipment
Condition Monitor reduces unscheduled downtime by predicting and
preventing critical equipment failures and diagnosing the root causes of
poor performance.
On a single screen, it quantifies equipment health and identifies
underperforming assets. Because equipment failure is predicted before
incidents and hazards occur, maintenance costs are reduced and production quality and capacity increases.
Process performance monitor: The Matrikon Process Performance Monitor predicts and prevents process failures and diagnoses the
root causes of poor performance before they lead to process abnormalities
and out-of-spec production.
On a single screen, it identifies underperforming process units and
imminent failures and performs accurate data analysis and interpretation.
It allows drilling down into specific performance issues, while also directly
benchmarking comparisons between local and remote unit operations.
Downtime reporter: The Matrikon Downtime Reporter seamlessly
integrates with existing plant systems to provide complete information and
reporting on the cause and cost of missed opportunities or downtime.
Analysis of these data allows decision makers to address and reduce
lost opportunities to achieve sustainable improvements in productivity
and ultimately reduce downtime.
Network security manager: The Matrikon Security Manager
is an integral component of an industry security program. Through a
single console, ensure plant cyber-security and mitigate risk by monitoring, assessing, protecting and managing your security program. Manage
workflow, generate compliance reports and enhance your ability to meet
increasing regulatory pressures.
Description: A process alarm is a signal to the operator that the
control system has failed to keep the process within normal operating
limits and that human intervention is necessary. Process alarms give
operators an opportunity to return a process to a normal state, avoiding
the costs of an emergency shutdown or equipment failure. Well-engineered alarms:
• Allow adequate time to respond, including operator recognition and
intervention, as well as process response time
• Activate at a manageable frequency in the context of all demands on
operator time
• Inform the operator as to the probable causes and recommend corrective actions.
Implementing a good alarm system is not an experimental concept.
Structured application of generally accepted good engineering practices
will create a perfectly viable process alarm design. The structure that
guides the development and implementation of a good alarm system is
called alarm management.
The LogMate Alarm Management System from TiPS, Incorporated
provides the technology to support an effective, efficient alarm management process:
• Performance benchmarks (KPIs) can be established and monitored,
triggering immediate notification when activity exceeds expected levels.
• A master database of alarm settings can be protected using an integrated management of change system.
• Operators can instantly jump from an alarm to a screen of advisory
information such as probable causes and corrective actions.
• An alarm design team can save time using the automated priority
selection tool. An alarm replication process eliminates duplicate data
entry and reduces configuration errors and inconsistency.
LogMate uses industry-standard technologies such as ASP.NET and
Microsoft SQL Server, to maximize security and simplicity. All LogMate
tools are accessed through a standard Internet Explorer browser, streamlining user access.
Benefits: A good alarm management program reduces incidents,
excursions from normal, and unplanned shutdowns or outages. While
preventing a single incident can recover the investment in alarm management, the continuous benefits are in the extended time in a normal
operating state and enhanced ability to increase throughput and minimize
environmental violations.
Scalability: The LogMate system is a thin-client product, requiring
only a single server to host the application. LogMate can scale from a
single user to an enterprise-class product, and is in use at single-site
facilities and in globally distributed manufacturing networks.
Interfaces: LogMate collects alarm activity and configuration data
via OPC and other methods, such as direct connections to databases or
text files, network printer emulations, or direct to a printer port. LogMate
is in use on virtually every known control system platform, including
those from ABB, Emerson, GE Fanuc, Honeywell, Intellution, Invensys,
Rockwell Automation, Siemens, Wonderware and Yokogawa.
The data contained in a LogMate system are natively stored in Microsoft SQL Server, allowing administration using standard SQL Server
tools. The data are not encrypted making them accessible to third-party
reporting tools or enterprise management systems.
Installations: LogMate was introduced as a commercial product in
1992. Over 1,000 installations have been sold worldwide, most following the introduction of the thin-client architecture in 2002. References
are available for all industries and most countries.
Licensor: TiPS, Incorporated, headquartered in Georgetown, Texas
(Austin), with representatives in Canada, South America, Europe, Asia,
Middle East, Africa and Australia.
Commercial installations: Over 1,000 combined global installations.
Licensor: Matrikon Inc., Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.
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April 2008 HYDROCARBON PROCESSING
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Asset Performance and Alarm Management 2008
First month baseline, No Visual MESA
recommendations were implemented
Second month baseline, Visual
MESA recommendations gradually
implemented by the operators
Third month
and beyond,
Visual MESA
recommendations
continuously
implemented
by the
operators
5,30 %
> 2 MM €/year
> 4%
6-3
27-2
20-2
13-2
6-2
30-1
23-1
16-1
9-1
2-1
1,19%
26-12
19-12
Savings/total energy costs, %
10
9
8
7
8
5
4
3
2
1
0
Day
Energy efficiency watchdog system
Objective: Visual MESA is a system that functions as an energy efficiency watchdog helping refineries and petrochemical plants keep their
energy costs and utility equipment efficiencies optimized 24 × 7 × 365.
This is achieved while operating within all equipment and emissions
constraints.
Application: Visual MESA has been designed to work online, connected to the plant data historian via OPC. It runs automatically at given
intervals, typically every half hour, and solves the mass and energy balances, as well as the economics of the site-wide utilities (i.e., steam, fuel,
electricity, etc.).
It generates corresponding KPIs and makes them available for publishing on the user’s portal or intranet. Results can also be shared through
built-in or customizable MS-Excel-based reports, HTML pages and MSVisio drawings.
The complete topology of the utilities systems together with the site’s
commodities contracts can be modeled in detail. The model is built
within an MS-Visio-based GUI that allows dragging and dropping blocks
from a Visual MESA customized stencil.
Visual MESA benefits operators and engineers in four distinct areas:
• Monitoring: By allowing tracking of equipment efficiencies, utilities’ imbalances and plant energy consumption indexes
• Optimization: By calculating necessary actions for producing and
consuming steam, fuel and power at lowest cost and by functioning as an
advisory system in open-loop mode and an energy-RTO in closed-loop
mode
• “What if?” planning: Through predicting steam system response
to proposed changes such as new equipment, plant expansions, process
changes and shutdowns using either current, historical or user-defined
data
• Auditing, accounting and data validation: By alerting the user to
measurement errors, leaks, model mismatches, etc.
Economics: Visual MESA users have documented annual energy cost
reductions on the order of 4% of their sites’ total energy bills.
The chart above represents energy cost savings achieved in 2003 as a
percentage of total energy cost at a 150-kbpd European refinery/olefins
unit. Each point results from an automatic run of the Visual MESA
“watchdog.” Energy costs were reduced by 4% or €2 MM per year with
the use of Visual MESA.
Commercial installations: Visual MESA has 34 installations
worldwide. Companies that have presented results of successful implementations of Visual MESA at technical conferences include ExxonMobil, Repsol (Spain), Total (France), Sunoco, Air Liquide and Ineos, among
others.
Licensor: Visual MESA is licensed by Soteica Ideas and Technology
LLC, Houston, Texas.
Select 320 at www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com/RS
Field device management
Description: Honeywell’s Field Device Manager is a stand-alone
configuration tool for HART devices that allows configurations to be
managed, monitored and changed for a large number of HART devices.
The Field Device Manager is based on the HART Communication
Foundation (HCF) SDC 625 standard HART host and Device
Descriptor (DD) IDE products. All HART device configuration settings can be accessed and changed.
Field Device Manager also allows accessing and running HART
device methods. Methods are short, step-by-step programs issuing
sequenced commands to direct a device-related task. These methods are
developed by the HART device vendor and are supplied as part of the
Device Descriptor (DD) file.
Field Device Manager uses unmodified vendor DD files for device
configuration, management and diagnostics tasks. All functionality and
features specified in the DD file are supported. Full access is available to
all the device functions and features that are described in the DD. All
device command types (Universal, Common-Practice and Device-Specific) are supported as the device vendor intended. Unlike other packages,
Field Device Manager does not require additional files or programming
to add support for new devices or to access device-specific features.
Benefits/economics:
• Field Device Manager is fully compliant with the HART open communications protocol and supports all Universal, Common-Practice and
Device-Specific commands described in the vendor’s HART DD file. You
can fully configure and support all device-specific parameters and methods for any HART device.
• Field Device Manager takes advantage of smart instrumentation
capabilities and works with any HART device so that plants can reap the
maximum value from their operations.
• It provides plant instrument technicians and maintenance personnel
with an optimized environment that simplifies typical tasks associated
with smart instruments—including configuration, diagnostics and maintenance.
• Field Device Manager helps predict problems prior to them occurring, by unlocking the power within smart instrumentation and making
it available, as well as provides full access to device parameters, configuration and diagnosis procedures. It also supports all parameters and methods of smart instruments.
• Field Device Manager is fully integrated with Honeywell’s Experion
platform, the foundation of the Experion Process Knowledge System
(PKS). This deep level of integration provides greater accuracy and reliability between the process control system and field devices.
• Field Device Manager can be used with any DCS/PLC system from
any vendor since it provides the same features and functionality working
with HART devices connected to hardware multiplexers. HART device
configurations can be connected to Experion, a separate system such as
Honeywell’s Safety Manager, or third-party PLCs and DCSs.
Scalability: Field Device Manager is scalable to multiple servers,
multiple clients and tens of thousands of devices.
Interfaces to: Field Device Manager is fully integrated with the
Experion (PKS). Field Device Manager can be used with other Honeywell
systems such as TDC 2000/TDC3000, FSC, PMD or any other thirdparty distributed control system.
Commercial installations: Information not available.
References: Visit www.honeywell.com/ps for the latest news
announcements and customer success stories.
Licensor: Honeywell Process Solutions is headquartered in Phoenix,
Arizona, and has offices around the world.
Select 321 at www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com/RS
HYDROCARBON PROCESSING April 2008
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Asset Performance and Alarm Management 2008
Integrated alarm management
Asset performance management
RCM and
FMEA
Risk-based Reliability
inspection analytics
RCA
Inspection Calibration Thickness
mgmt.
mgmt.
monitoring
Operator
rounds
Asset strategies
Process data
Engineering
Metrics and
scorecards
Financial
Description: Unplanned downtime results in over $20B of lost revenue each year. One of the most common causes of unplanned downtime
is failure to respond effectively during plant disturbances and process
upsets. Industry studies show that the average operator is being subjected
to considerably more alarms (10X) than he/she can effectively process.
With the proliferation of alarms and reduction in operating personnel, it is no wonder that alarm management is becoming such an important topic in the process industries. Today, some automation suppliers are
providing integrated alarm management tools to minimize nuisance
alarms and improve operator performance through shelving, suppression,
smart alarming, online viewing of corrective actions and key performance
indicators (KPIs).
Inspection management
Benefits/economics: Siemens SIMATIC PCS 7 has set a new
industry standard for “out-of-the-box” alarm management capabilities,
making it easier than ever to implement a proactive alarm management
program. It has been designed to leverage industry best practices, as well
as compliance with the most important published standards, such as
EEMUA Publication 191 and NAMUR NA 102, in addition to the ISA’s
evolving standard SP18.02.
Description: Visual asset surveillance and inspection are critical elements to assessing asset condition and avoiding equipment failures. In
addition, many inspection programs are mandated by regulatory agencies
that can levy significant fines for noncompliance. Meridium’s Inspection
Management module provides the capabilities to drive large- scale inspection programs and ensure statutory compliance. Inspection management
allows asset owners and operators to manage inspection plans, document
the condition of an asset and track inspection recommendations to
closure. As an integrated component of the APM suite, inspection management provides the methodology for program execution as well as key
capabilities to optimize the inspection program through risk assessments
and analytical evaluation of equipment performance and condition.
Scalability:
• Alarm suppression by tag or process area with a dedicated display
showing all suppressed alarms
• Ability to add operator comments to the historical alarm log
• Ability to configure corrective actions and document operational
best practices for online viewing by the operator
• Identify and correct “nuisance” alarms by analyzing a built-in alarm
frequency display
• Compare actual performance to KPIs (such as number of alarms
active for > 24 hr)
• State-based “smart” alarming as shown in Table 1
• Alarm “shelving.”
Strategic approach/goals: The biggest benefit of an integrated
technology software solution is that organizations can now react much
more dynamically to changing plant conditions than was previously
possible. Meridium’s integrated APM initiative provides:
• KPIs enabling identification of improvement opportunities
• Automated technical analysis to identify and predict failure occurrence and cause
• Supports development and continuous improvement of operational,
surveillance, maintenance and design strategies based upon best practices,
operational history and fact-based decision support
• Drives strategies back to execution systems to close the loop and
continuously improve asset performance across the enterprise.
Table 1. Characteristics of good alarms/alarm system
(Ref. 1)
Spreadsheets/
databases
CMMS
Legacy
systems
Handhelds
Interfaces: Meridium leverages critical asset performance data from
ERP, CMMS, DCS and other systems, including interfaces to SAP, IBM
Maximo, Indus Passport, INOVx and Fluke analyzers, among others.
Scalability: Meridium can be used to improve reliability of a single component at a single plant, but the true value potential lies in implementing an
APM solution across the plant and throughout the enterprise. For global
companies, Meridium can be implemented enterprise wide to allow easy
transfer of information across departments, plants and the entire company.
Economics/benefits: Inspection management, when used in conjunction with a comprehensive APM program, conservatively yields
benefits of approximately $4 million per year for a typical 100-Mbpd
refinery. Benefit areas include reductions in lost profit opportunity costs,
avoiding abnormal incidents, staff productivity improvements, reductions
in the maintenance budget, etc.1
Commercial installations: Meridium has been licensed at over
880 sites in 70 countries, including clients in the refining, chemicals,
power, mining and consumer packaged goods industries.
Relevant: Not spurious or of low operational value
Unique: Not duplicating another alarm
Timely: Not long before a response is needed or too late to do anything
Prioritized: Indicating the importance that the operator deal with the problem
Understandable: Having a message that is clear and understandable
Diagnostic: Identifies the problem that has occurred
Advisory: Indicates the action that should be taken (corrective response)
Focusing: Draws attention to the most important issues
Economics/benefits: All of the above capabilities are directly
integrated into PCS 7’s HMI and engineering system, reducing the time
and effort for configuration. This integration provides simple access
information at the touch of a button from any HMI console in the
system. Most of PCS 7’s alarm management tools can also be layered on
top of third-party controllers, providing additional benefits for all of your
existing nonSiemens equipment.
Commercial installations: Over 2,500 PCS 7 alarm management
installations worldwide with close to 100 in the US.
Reference: “Five Techniques for Preventing Unplanned Downtime,”
Siemens, June 2006.
Licensor: Siemens AG, Munich, Germany.
Reference: 1 “Quantifying the ROI of an asset performance management program,” Hydrocarbon Processing, May 2007.
Licensor: Meridium, Inc. with offices in Roanoke, Virginia, US; Houston, Texas, US; Dubai, UAE; Walldorf, Germany; and Perth, Australia.
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April 2008 HYDROCARBON PROCESSING
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Asset Performance and Alarm Management 2008
Alarm system
Sensors
SIS
Monitor
BPCS
HMI
Historian
logger
I/O
Final control
elements
I/O
Panel
Operator
Alternate
HMI
Interface
Process
Automation and safety systems
Integrated SIS alarm management
Description: For many years, the concept of keeping your basic process
control system (BPCS) separate and independent from your safety instrumented system (SIS) has been widely accepted. However, global economics (getting more from less) and the update of process safety standards (i.e.,
ISA 84.00.01-2004) are having plants reconsider their position.
One of the potential benefits of an integrated approach is the ability
to better couple your plant’s SIS alarms to your plant’s operator screens.
In the past, passing critical data between separate systems was difficult
enough; passing noncritical (yet important) system status and alarms was
almost impossible. The integrated approach makes all of this much more
manageable than ever before.
Strategic approach/goals: In the process automation sector, it
is apparent that alarm systems are becoming more and more complex.
Alarm management systems are faced with managing and displaying
information from historically separate and independent systems (e.g.,
PLCs, motor controls, alarm panels and safety interlock systems, etc.).
The alarm system also must include a mechanism for transmitting the
alarm to the interface where it is indicated to the operator. Depending
upon the complexity of the application, the alarm system may also
include many other features such as alarm logging and transmission to
remote operators. Other functions outside the alarm system are important to alarm system effectiveness.
Interfaces: The process industry has historically used separate systems
for process and safety control for simple technological reasons.
One of the benefits of having separate systems and using different
technologies was that it provided protection against common-cause failures
(where one problem makes multiple devices or systems fail). For years, there
has been this intangible benefit that different was just better.
Over the past few years, system automation suppliers have been offering
both BPCS and safety systems. One of the biggest benefits for end users for
choosing a single automation supplier is the ability to provide seamless data
integration between traditionally diverse and disparate systems. While not
all suppliers offer the same level of integration, generally there are three
recognized levels of integration: interfaced, integrated and common.
Economics/benefits: The main benefit for any integration level is
having the capability to share data from one platform to another. Where
the only potential trade-off for integrating is the loss claiming additional
risk reduction that the BPCS is offered as a separate and independent
layer. In most cases, however, this might be insignificant since most
integrated SIS systems offer extremely high risk reduction capabilities.
Historically, alarm management was one of the most undervalued and
underutilized assets of process automation systems. Today, as plant operators struggle to comply with process safety standards, they will realize
the benefits these integrated systems provide.
Commercial installations: The Simatic PCS 7 integrated
process control and safety system from Siemens is being utilized in close
to 100 installations throughout the US.
References: Fialkowski, Charles “Does Your DCS Alarm Management System Know About Your SIS?” ISA Safety Conference, 2006.
Intelligent alarm rationalization
Description: Advanced Alarm Administrator Suite (AAASuite) is an
intelligent alarm rationalization software solution designed to optimize
and enhance process alarms triggered by control systems. AAASuite
improves operator performance by providing timely notification of only
necessary alarms as well as providing active alarm rationalization, suppression and diagnostic functions to assist in preventing alarm overload.
AAASuite helps avoid potential safety or environmental incidents due to
alarm overload and helps to reduce the possibility of missing critical alarms.
It also helps capture critical events during plant upsets without being
overwhelmed by nuisance alarms, and relieves operators from tedious,
repetitive tasks giving operators more time to focus on process problems.
Strategic approach/goals: Ideally, alarms should be systematically
and uniformly distributed at the transition points between normal, upset
and shutdown plant statuses so that operators are notified in a timely
manner and only when necessary.
AAASuite automatically detects typical nuisance alarms and notifies
both the alarm causes and the required corrective measures to operators.
Typical nuisance alarms such as repeating HI/LO alarms caused by
improper alarm settings and chattering HI/LO alarms caused by improper
PID parameter settings can be automatically detected. When the process
status changes in such a way that unnecessary alarms no longer occur,
AAASuite automatically lifts this alarm suppression.
AAASuite stores the optimal alarm settings and automatically downloads the required settings to the control system when a plant startup,
shutdown, product grade changeover or process load change occurs. Furthermore, when operators change alarm settings during plant operation,
the new settings will be automatically uploaded to the AAASuite database
the next time there is a change in the operating conditions.
Interfaces: AAASuite currently interfaces to Yokogawa’s CENTUM
process control systems through OPC. Subsequent releases will allow
communication to other process control systems.
Economics/benefits: Benefits can be classified into two areas: savings per year attributed to increased operator efficiency through workload
reduction and to increased stability of the process units.
Commercial installations: More than 100 installations globally.
References: Alarm Systems: A Guide to Design, Management and
Procurement, Publication No. 191, Edition 2, The Engineering Equipment and Materials Users’ Association (EEMUA), 2007, London,
England.
“Yokogawa Unveils VigilantPlant: VigilantPlant Alarm Management
Strategies,” ARC white paper, January 2005.
Blaesi, J., “No Alarm–No Manipulation: Operation Improvement for
Plant Stability,” Proceedings of the Texas A&M Instrumentation Symposium, January 2004.
Licensor: Yokogawa Electric Corporation, headquarters in Tokyo,
Japan, with regional headquarters in Singapore, Amersfoort, The Netherlands, and Newnan, Georgia.
Licensor: Siemens AG, Munich, Germany.
Select 324 at www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com/RS
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HYDROCARBON PROCESSING April 2008
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Asset Performance and Alarm Management 2008
Automation
Enterprise resource
planning
(ERP level)
Maintenance
Enterprise asset
management
system
Manufacturing
execution systems
(MES level)
MES
maintenance
operations
Controls
(process
and field level)
Plant
asset
management
Plant automation and maintenance in process engineering
Intelligent asset management
Description: Plant operation ensures the desired products are produced with the appropriate quality, in the defined quantity, at a specified
time and with minimum resources with respect to personnel, raw materials, energy, costs, etc.
Maintenance or plant engineers are responsible for guaranteeing
high plant availability with minimum use of personnel, material, energy,
costs, etc.
The plant operator is mainly interested in information concerning
the process, whereas the maintenance engineer requires information on
the state of the production equipment.
SIMATIC PCS 7 permits a clear division of information between
plant operators and maintenance engineers as the user groups. This socalled plant asset management reduces the scope of information for each
of these user groups to the amount required for the respective task. At the
same time, the availability and reliability of the information for the plant
operator and the quality of operator interventions are improved. This
increases production equipment availability.
Strategy: An intelligent asset management system maximizes the
economic value of plant assets by helping you reduce unplanned downtime and efficiently use maintenance dollars. Successful asset maintenance requires an intelligent management strategy to optimize performance of your process control system assets.
Interfaces: SIMATIC PCS 7 provides interfaces to various process
automation equipment such as: valves and transmitters, computers,
networking equipment, drives and motors, plant components (pumps
and heat exchangers), controllers, and I/Os and process analyzers.
Scalability: SIMATIC PCS 7 enables you to implement different
maintenance strategies depending on whether responses to failures or
preventive actions are required.
• Corrective maintenance strategies are followed when a fault has
occurred. For example, failures occurred in this case are minimized in a
redundant plant design.
• Preventive strategies allow you to complete maintenance measures
before faults occur, preventing unplanned downtimes. Preventive strategies can be implemented by the following three ways:
1. Time-based measures, such as regular maintenance activities
2. Condition-based measure that are initiated depending on the
degree of wear
3. Predictive measures that can recognize problems early and provide
you with information on the remaining service.
Commercial installations: Over 2,500 PCS 7 asset management
installations worldwide and close to 100 in the US.
Reference: “Optimizing Energy Consumption and Improving
Operational Efficiency Through the Use of Smart MCCs in Process
Automation Systems,” Siemens 2007.
Licensor: Siemens AG, Munich, Germany.
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April 2008 HYDROCARBON PROCESSING
Management of all plant assets
Description: Emerson’s AMS Suite is a family of best-in-class diagnostic software applications that enables you to detect plant equipment
problems before they occur. AMS Suite provides real-time information
to enable effective decision support for mechanical and process assets or
instruments and valves.
• AMS Suite: Asset Portal—AMS Asset Portal provides an enterprisewide view of asset health in a single Web browser. With AMS Asset
Portal, your operations, maintenance and management teams have individualized views of prioritized predictive diagnostics.
AMS Asset Portal also allows you to define rules and policies on your
asset alerts to trigger work notifications in your enterprise asset management (EAM) system. These automated work notifications streamline
maintenance procedures and eliminate the need to manually create work
orders for critical assets.
• AMS Suite: Machinery Health Manager—AMS Machinery Manager
integrates condition monitoring from multiple predictive maintenance
technologies, including vibration analysis, oil analysis, infrared thermography,
motor diagnostics, ultrasonic detection, and laser alignment and balancing,
to provide a complete picture of machinery health.
• AMS Suite: Equipment Performance Monitor—AMS Performance Monitor provides key performance indicators based on comparing
current mechanical and process equipment equipment performance to
performance at design conditions.
• AMS Suite: Intelligent Device Manager—AMS Device Manager
provides predictive diagnostics from your HART and Foundation
fieldbus field devices. With AMS Device Manager, you can also commission and configure instruments and valves, monitor status and alerts,
troubleshoot directly from the control room or maintenance shop computer, review current and historical events, manage calibration and automatically document activities.
Benefits/economics: Customers have discovered that AMS Suite
delivers on its promise to improve plant availability and performance:
• $1.5 M/year operations savings—Shell
• 80%/year valve maintenance savings—Chevron Texaco
• Increased throughput by 120,000 barrels/day—gasoline and
petroleum refinery
• 60% reduction in compressor operations costs—Petrolera Ameriven
• Reduced downtime saves $10.1 M—Rompetrol.
Scalability: AMS Suite is available as a complete package or each
application can be purchased individually. Applications are licensed by
tag count, so it is scalable to meet each customer’s needs.
Interfaces to: SAP and MAXIMO.
Commercial installations: Approximately 14,000 worldwide.
References: Article: “Act, don’t react, for greater asset optimization”
(URL link: http://www.emersonprocess.com/home/library/articles/
plantengr/plantengr0708_assetoptimization.pdf ).
Licensor: Emerson Process Management, US headquarters in Austin,
Texas. Major project execution and support organizations around the
globe.
Select 327 at www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com/RS
Asset Performance and Alarm Management 2008
Operations
Unit yields and profitability
Troubleshooting
Bad instrument location
Measure
I
Simulation
aly
ze
Reconciled
daily reports
mp
rove
Consistent
information
An
Plant design
Revamp
What-if analysis
Material balance reconciliation
Description: The Material Balance Module (MBM) turns real-time
process data, which is subject to random error, bias and gross error, into
consistent and reliable information about the plant. Communicating
directly with IT plant infrastructure allows the MBM to automate the
reconciliation runs without manual input making the MBM an automated,
low-maintenance solution. The MBM incorporates industry-proven reconciliation methodologies within a flowsheeting environment to provide
daily material balances around each unit in the plant. This information
can be used to identify faulty flow instrumentation and aid in pinpointing
material loss locations for corrective action. The Invensys Material Balance
Module is a component of the Automated Rigorous Performance Monitoring (ARPM) solution from Invensys’ SimSci-Esscor unit.
Benefits/economics:
• Increase profitability through early detection of gross meter errors
and more consistent data for planning and yield accounting
• Increase reliability by pinpointing problematic meters for service
• Increase productivity by ensuring maintenance of problematic
meters
• Reduce engineering workload through automation of all program
features including: data retrieval, data reconciliation and reporting
• Improve safety by pinpointing material loss locations.
Applications:
• Producing daily material balances around major units in a process
to identify faulty meters
• Operations and turnaround decision support
• Loss prevention and accurate throughput monitoring
• Obtaining consistent data for LP updates and yield accounting
• Accident and shutdown avoidance by identifying gross errors in
instrumentation before they trigger any alarms
• Efficiently setting maintenance schedules for flow instrumentation.
Scalability: The MBM is a simple representation of the plant’s stream
and units for material balance purposes. The model can be scaled up
within the same graphical user interface to incorporate more rigorous
heat and material balance to allow the model to be used for online performance monitoring and operations decisions support or advanced
closed-loop optimization or real-time enterprise control.
Interfaces: The External Data Interface (EDI) subsystem of MBM
enables direct drag-and-drop retrieval of process and economic information from numerous sources, including the DCS, laboratory and data
historians. EDI has embedded direct interfaces to InFusion Historian,
PHD and PI historians, and also supports standard data transfer protocols such as ODBC and OPC.
Commercial installations: Although the Material Balance Module has been on the market for only a short time, there are already four
installations.
Reference: “Refinery-wide Data Reconciliation Case Study: Operational Decision Support Based on Reconciled Data,” NPRA 2007 Q&A
& Technology Forum Show Daily, Oct. 2007, Mike Cronkwright and
Gerald Frey, Shell Canada, and Scott Brown and Harpreet Gulati, Invensys SimSci-Esscor.
Licensor: Invensys Process Systems with consulting, sales and project
management professionals in offices worldwide.
Select 328 at www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com/RS
Asset performance management
RCM and
FMEA
Risk-based Reliability
inspection analytics
RCA
Inspection Calibration Thickness
mgmt.
mgmt.
monitoring
Operator
rounds
Asset strategies
Process data
Spreadsheets/
databases
Engineering
CMMS
Metrics and
scorecards
Financial
Legacy
systems
Handhelds
Metrics and scorecards
Description: The cornerstone of any performance improvement program
is defining and implementing a measurement system to document actual
progress against strategic goals. In the context of an asset performance management (APM) initiative, measuring the output, costs, failure rates and
compliance of production assets is key to understanding how an asset is
performing relative to the overall strategy. With clear visibility of poorly
performing equipment and strategies, asset owners can implement, monitor
and continually improve best practices to optimize utilization and costs.
Strategic approach/goals: The biggest benefit of an integrated
technology software solution is that organizations can now react much
more dynamically to changing plant conditions than was previously
possible. Meridium’s integrated APM initiative provides:
• KPIs enabling identification of improvement opportunities
• Automated technical analysis to identify and predict failure occurrence and cause
• Supports development and continuous improvement of operational,
surveillance, maintenance and design strategies based upon best practices,
operational history and fact-based decision support
• Drives strategies back to execution systems to close the loop and
continuously improve asset performance across the enterprise.
Interfaces: Meridium APM leverages critical asset performance data
from ERP, CMMS, DCS and other systems, including interfaces to
SAP, IBM Maximo, Indus Passport, Inovx and Fluke analyzers,
among others.
Scalability: Meridium can be used to improve reliability of a single
component at a single plant, but the true value potential lies in implementing an APM solution across the plant and throughout the enterprise.
For global companies, Meridium can be implemented enterprise wide
to allow easy transfer of information across departments, plants and the
entire company.
Economics/benefits: Metrics and Scorecards, when used in conjunction with a comprehensive APM program, conservatively yields
benefits of approximately $4 million per year for a typical 100 Mbpd
refinery. Benefit areas include reductions in lost profit opportunity costs,
avoiding abnormal incidents, staff productivity improvements, and
reductions in the maintenance budget, etc.1
Commercial installations: Meridium has been licensed at more
than over 880 sites in 70 countries, including clients in the refining,
chemicals, power, mining and consumer packaged goods industries.
Reference: 1 “Quantifying the ROI of an Asset Performance Management Program,” Hydrocarbon Processing, May 2007.
Licensor: Meridium, Inc. with offices in Roanoke, Virginia, US;
Houston, Texas, US; Dubai, UAE; Walldorf, Germany; and Perth,
Australia.
Select 329 at www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com/RS
HYDROCARBON PROCESSING April 2008
I 145
Asset Performance and Alarm Management 2008
Operator alerts
Description: Honeywell’s UserAlert software allows plant operators
to be notified of selected conditions in the process, thereby freeing them
from tedious monitoring tasks as well as heading off situations before
they turn into alarms.
UserAlert helps to reduce alarm flooding during emergencies by
offloading alerts and notifications, identified as lower priority than
alarms, to a separate system. UserAlert can also notify other plant personnel of situations using its monitor client, or it can forward those notifications as e-mail messages or pages. UserAlert can be operator configured,
and can satisfy short-term needs without the formality of management
of change and committee review.
Benefits/economics:
• Reduces the number and impact of abnormal situations by providing early detection of abnormal situations, thereby improving the likelihood of minimizing the impact of that situation
• Reduces the likelihood of alarm floods by offloading alerts and
notifications that are lower priority than alarms to a separate system
• Provides notification of other plant personnel through its monitor
client, e-mails and pagers, allowing them to monitor the system without
impacting the alarm system
• Works with the Experion Process Knowledge System (PKS) Enterprise Model, assuring a common reference model for users and enabling
knowledge (the alert conditions and activities) along with all other plant
knowledge to be aggregated with a specific asset
• Works with the boundary information recorded in the Alarm Configuration Manager to assure consistent use of boundaries throughout the
plant.
Scalability: UserAlert is scalable to 10,000 conditions per minute per
the UserAlert Manager server.
Interfaces to: UserAlert uses OLE for Process Control (OPC) Data
Access (DA) communications to monitor values. Any standard OPC DA
1.0 server may be monitored. It has been validated with the Experion
R210, the TPN R651 and the Uniformance R202 servers.
Commercial installations: Information not available.
References: Visit www.honeywell.com/ps for the latest news
announcements and customer success stories.
Licensor: Honeywell Process Solutions is headquartered in Phoenix,
Arizona, and has offices around the world.
Asset performance management
RCM and
FMEA
Risk-based Reliability
inspection analytics
RCA
Inspection Calibration Thickness
mgmt.
mgmt.
monitoring
Operator
rounds
Asset strategies
Process data
Spreadsheets/
databases
Engineering
CMMS
Metrics and
scorecards
Financial
Legacy
systems
Handhelds
Operator rounds management
Description: Ensuring that operators are monitoring critical equipment and capturing the appropriate data are fundamental to managing
equipment reliability. Meridium’s Operator Rounds module puts the
power of Meridium in the hands of equipment operators through a
handheld application that lets them execute aspects of the asset strategy
by monitoring equipment performance and capturing condition data
electronically in the field. Meridium integrates equipment strategies into
day-to-day operations and surveillance programs and facilitates the
efficient assessment and quantification of asset performance.
Strategic approach/goals: The biggest benefit of an integrated
technology software solution is that organizations can now react much
more dynamically to changing plant conditions than was previously
possible. A Meridium’s integrated APM initiative provides:
• KPIs enabling identification of improvement opportunities
• Automated technical analysis to identify and predict failure occurrence and cause
• Supports development and continuous improvement of operational,
surveillance, maintenance and design strategies based upon best practices,
operational history and fact-based decision support
• Drives strategies back to execution systems to close the loop and
continuously improve asset performance across the enterprise.
Interfaces: Meridium APM leverages critical asset performance data
from ERP, CMMS, DCS and other systems, including interfaces to
SAP, IBM Maximo, Indus Passport, Inovx and Fluke analyzers,
among others.
Scalability: Meridium can be used to improve the reliability of a
single component at a single plant, but the true value potential lies in
implementing an APM solution across the plant and throughout the
enterprise. For global companies, Meridium can be implemented enterprise wide to allow easy transfer of information across departments, plants
and the entire company.
Economics/benefits: Operator Rounds, when used in conjunction
with a comprehensive APM program, conservatively yields benefits of
approximately $4 million per year for a typical 100-Mbpd refinery.
Benefit areas include reductions in lost profit opportunity costs, avoidance of abnormal incidents, staff productivity improvements, reductions
in the maintenance budget, etc.1
Commercial installations: Meridium has been licensed at over
880 sites in 70 countries, including the refining, chemicals, power,
mining and consumer packaged goods industries.
Reference: 1 “Quantifying the ROI of an Asset Performance Management Program,” Hydrocarbon Processing, May 2007.
Licensor: Meridium, Inc. with offices in Roanoke, Virginia, US;
Houston, Texas, US; Dubai, UAE; Walldorf, Germany; and Perth,
Australia.
146
I
Select 330 at www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com/RS
April 2008 HYDROCARBON PROCESSING
Select 331 at www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com/RS
Written by Carl L. Yaws, World’s Leading Authority
on Chemical Engineering
Asset performance management
RCM and
FMEA
Risk-based Reliability
inspection analytics
RCA
Inspection Calibration Thickness
mgmt.
mgmt.
monitoring
Operator
rounds
Asset strategies
Process data
Spreadsheets/
databases
Engineering
CMMS
Metrics and
scorecards
Financial
Legacy
systems
Handhelds
RCM and FMEA
Description: Equipment failure prevention can be successful only if
the implemented strategies address the underlying cause of equipment
failures. After failure modes are well understood, their effects can be
assessed, and recommendations can be made for ways to prevent potential
failures and avoid the consequences. Meridium’s Reliability-Centered
Maintenance (RCM) and Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA)
module enables companies to conduct rigorous analysis of individual assets
and entire systems for the purpose of identifying the causes of potential
failures and then implementing strategies to prevent failures from occurring. RCM and FMEA analysis serves as a powerful mechanism for developing an in-depth understanding of equipment functions and failures.
Strategic approach/goals: The biggest benefit of an integrated
technology software solution is that organizations can now react much
more dynamically to changing plant conditions than was previously
possible. Meridium integrated APM initiative provides:
• KPIs enabling identification of improvement opportunities
• Automated technical analysis to identify and predict failure occurrence and cause
• Supports development and continuous improvement of operational,
surveillance, maintenance and design strategies based upon best practices,
operational history and fact-based decision support
• Drives strategies back to execution systems to close the loop and
continuously improve asset performance across the enterprise.
812 pages/Hardcover/Pub date: Nov. 2005
ISBN-13: 978-0-9765-1137-3 $195.00 US*
784 pages/Hardcover/Pub date: Jan. 2007
ISBN-13: 978-1-9337-6207-4 $195.00 US*
Interfaces: Meridium leverages critical asset performance data from
ERP, CMMS, DCS and other systems, including interfaces to SAP, IBM
Maximo, Indus Passport, Inovx and Fluke analyzers, among others.
Scalability: Meridium can be used to improve reliability of a single
component at a single plant, but the true value potential lies in implementing an APM solution across the plant and throughout the enterprise.
For global companies, Meridium can be implemented enterprise wide
to allow easy transfer of information from department to department,
plant to plant, across the organization.
Economics/benefits: RCM and FMEA, when used in conjunction
with a comprehensive APM program, conservatively yield benefits of
approximately $4 million per year for a typical 100-Mbpd refinery.
Benefit areas include reductions in lost profit opportunity costs, avoidance of abnormal incidents, staff productivity improvements, reductions
in the maintenance budget, etc.1
Commercial installations: Meridium has been licensed at over
880 sites in 70 countries, including clients in the refining, chemicals,
power, mining and consumer packaged goods industries.
Reference: 1 “Quantifying the ROI of an Asset Performance Management Program,” Hydrocarbon Processing, May 2007.
Licensor: Meridium, Inc. with offices in Roanoke, Virginia, US;
Houston, Texas, US; Dubai, UAE; Walldorf, Germany; and Perth,
Australia.
200 pages/Hardcover/Pub date: Nov. 2007
ISBN-13: 978-1-9337-6210-4 $175.00 US*
Gulf Publishing Company
www.GPCBooks.com
Phone: +1 713-529-4301 l
Fax: +1 713-520-4433
*Applicable tax, shipping and handling apply
Select 332 at www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com/RS
HYDROCARBON PROCESSING April 2008
I 147
Asset Performance and Alarm Management 2008
Asset performance management
RCM and
FMEA
Risk-based Reliability
inspection analytics
RCA
Inspection Calibration Thickness
mgmt.
mgmt.
monitoring
Operator
rounds
Asset strategies
Process data
Real-time financial performance
Description: The Invensys Real-time Finance packaged composite
application (PCA) synchs business intelligence from plant floor control
systems with enterprise business systems. The Real-Time Finance PCA
provides managers and executives with clear, instantaneous information
about production-related financial performance so they can manage tradeoffs
between asset availability and utilization. It provides plant managers, operators, engineers and maintenance personnel with performance information
so that they can make corrective process adjustments in real time. Conventional technologies intended to integrate plant floor and enterprise financial
systems only provide information in weekly or monthly aggregates.
Enabling technologies include SAP NetWeaver, SAP MII (Manufacturing Integration and Intelligence) and Invensys’ open, standards-based
ArchestrA technology. Connected to the MII, the Real-time Finance PCA
links into the SAP ERP environment in the SAP/R3 product.
Benefits/economics:
• Greater levels of visibility of production-related financial performance
• Timely, clear real-time information
• Improved alignment of operations and business objectives
• Immediate determination of consequences from business and production process actions
• Increased manufacturer responsiveness and agility
• Reduced integration costs for connecting the plant or shop floor to
enterprise solutions
Strategic approach: With SAP PCA Certified status, Invensys
delivers true enterprise service-oriented architecture (enterprise SOA),
following the principles and standards of SAP’s composite architectural
guidelines. The Real-time Finance PCA reuses, integrates and orchestrates
functionalities from existing applications in the context of an enterprise
SOA, needing only selective development of new functionality where
needed to fill gaps. This PCA operates with Invensys’ InFusion Enterprise
Control System, with which most existing plant floor and enterprise
systems can now be cost-effectively integrated into a common system.
Scalability: The Real-time Finance PCA scales from a single-solution
factory environment up through the enterprise.
Interfaces: The Invensys Real-time Finance PCA plugs into any
industrial automation and IT infrastructure. It provides standards-based
interoperability between SAP business applications and Invensys’ InFusion Enterprise Control System.
Commercial installations: The Real-time Finance PCA is available as an add-on to the InFusion Enterprise Control System or the
ArchestrA automation platform which together represent more than 350
sites worldwide. More than 50 of these implement related Real-Time
Accounting and Real-Time Finance applications.
Reference: “BASF plugs naphtha cracker units into the market,”
Process Engineering Online, October 8, 2007.
Spreadsheets/
databases
Engineering
CMMS
Metrics and
scorecards
Financial
Legacy
systems
Handhelds
Reliability analytics
Description: Understanding the failure/repair characteristics of plant
equipment or a system of plant assets and their associated costs is a
critical component of any comprehensive asset performance management
(APM) program. Meridium’s Reliability Analytics solution provides the
ability to understand the failure/repair characteristics of a single asset or
the reliability characteristics of a complete system of assets. Using near
real-time data allows these analyses to remain evergreen as plant conditions change. Meridium can model a system of assets, a production unit
or a complete facility. Simulations can be performed to understand future
availability and to compare the cost/benefit of different asset configurations, maintenance strategies or equipment reliability characteristics.
Strategic approach/goals: The biggest benefit of an integrated
technology software solution is that organizations can now react much
more dynamically to changing plant conditions than was previously
possible. Meridium’s integrated APM initiative provides:
• KPIs enabling identification of improvement opportunities
• Automated technical analysis to identify and predict failure occurrence and cause
• Supports development and continuous improvement of operational,
surveillance, maintenance and design strategies based upon best practices,
operational history and fact-based decision support
• Drives strategies back to execution systems to close the loop and
continuously improve asset performance across the enterprise.
Interfaces: Meridium leverages critical asset performance data from
ERP, CMMS, DCS and other systems, including interfaces to SAP, IBM
Maximo, Indus Passport, Inovx and Fluke analyzers, among others.
Scalability: Meridium can be used to improve reliability of a single
component at a single plant, but the true value potential lies in implementing an APM solution across the plant and throughout the enterprise.
For global companies, Meridium can be implemented enterprise wide
to allow easy transfer of information across departments, plants and the
entire company.
Economics/benefits: Reliability analytics, when used in conjunction with a comprehensive APM program, conservatively yields benefits
of approximately $4 million per year for a typical 100-Mbpd refinery.
Benefit areas include reductions in lost profit opportunity costs, avoiding
abnormal incidents, staff productivity improvements, reductions in the
maintenance budget, etc.1
Commercial installations: Meridium has been licensed at over
880 sites in 70 countries, including the refining, chemicals, power,
mining and consumer packaged goods industries.
Reference: 1 “Quantifying the ROI of an Asset Performance Management Program,” Hydrocarbon Processing, May 2007.
Licensor: Invensys Process Systems with consulting, sales and project
management professionals in offices worldwide.
Licensor: Meridium, Inc. with offices in Roanoke, Virginia, US;
Houston, Texas, US; Dubai, UAE; Walldorf, Germany; and Perth,
Australia.
Select 333 at www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com/RS
Select 334 at www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com/RS
148
I
April 2008 HYDROCARBON PROCESSING
Asset Performance and Alarm Management 2008
Asset performance management
RCM and
FMEA
Risk-based Reliability
inspection analytics
RCA
Inspection Calibration Thickness
mgmt.
mgmt.
monitoring
Operator
rounds
Asset strategies
Process data
Spreadsheets/
databases
Asset performance management
Engineering
CMMS
RCM and
FMEA
Metrics and
scorecards
Financial
Legacy
systems
Handhelds
Risk-based Reliability
inspection analytics
RCA
Inspection Calibration Thickness
mgmt.
mgmt.
monitoring
Operator
rounds
Asset strategies
Process data
Spreadsheets/
databases
Engineering
CMMS
Metrics and
scorecards
Financial
Legacy
systems
Handhelds
Risk-based inspection
Root-cause analysis
Description: Through quantitative analysis of failure risk, inspection
activities can be optimized to ensure resources are allocated to monitor the
right equipment at the right time. Meridium provides a complete RBI work
process that allows for documenting corrosion circuits, damage mechanisms
and the associated risk analysis. The risk analysis can be provided by
Meridium’s integrated Criticality Calculator (based upon API 580 standards)
or by other popular industry criticality calculators through supported interfaces. Meridium’s RBI module provides the critical work processes to not
only calculate risk but also to ensure that inspection strategies are evaluated
as equipment condition changes, ensuring an evergreen program.
Description: Unplanned downtime and the inability to meet planned
production rates due to failures result in higher cost, increased risk and
lower profits. Applying root-cause analysis (RCA) techniques will help
equipment owners better understand the underlying causes of failures
and use that information to prevent future occurrences. Meridium’s
Root-Cause Analysis module offers a systematic approach for determining the root causes of failures and developing meaningful recommendations to eliminate or reduce the impact of those events.
Strategic approach/goals: The biggest benefit of an integrated
technology software solution is that organizations can now react much
more dynamically to changing plant conditions than was previously
possible. Meridium integrated APM initiative provides:
• KPIs enabling identification of improvement opportunities
• Automated technical analysis to identify and predict failure occurrence and cause
• Supports development and continuous improvement of operational,
surveillance, maintenance and design strategies based upon best practices,
operational history and fact-based decision support
• Drives strategies back to execution systems to close the loop and
continuously improve asset performance across the enterprise.
Interfaces: Meridium leverages critical asset performance data from
ERP, CMMS, DCS and other systems, including interfaces to SAP, IBM
Maximo, Indus Passport, Inovx and Fluke analyzers, among others.
Scalability. Meridium can be used to improve reliability of a single
component at a single plant, but the true value potential lies in implementing an APM solution across the plant and throughout the enterprise.
For global companies, Meridium can be implemented enterprise wide
to allow easy transfer of information across departments, plants and the
entire company.
Economics/benefits: RBI, when used in conjunction with a
comprehensive APM program, conservatively yields benefits of
approximately $4 million per year for a typical 100-Mbpd refinery.
Benefit areas include reductions in lost profit opportunity costs, avoiding abnormal incidents, staff productivity improvements, reductions
in the maintenance budget, etc.1
Commercial installations: Meridium solution has been licensed
at over 880 sites in 70 countries, including clients in the refining,
chemicals, power, mining and consumer packaged goods industries.
Strategic approach/goals: The biggest benefit of an integrated
technology software solution is that organizations can now react much
more dynamically to changing plant conditions than was previously
possible. Meridium’s integrated APM initiative provides:
• Key performance indicators enabling identifying improvement
opportunities
• Automated technical analysis to identify and predict failure occurrence and cause
• Supports development and continuous improvement of operational,
surveillance, maintenance and design strategies based upon best practices,
operational history and fact-based decision support
• Drives strategies back to execution systems to close the loop and
continuously improve asset performance across the enterprise.
Interfaces: Meridium leverages critical asset performance data from
ERP, CMMS, DCS and other systems, including interfaces to SAP, IBM
Maximo, Indus Passport, Inovx and Fluke analyzers, among others.
Scalability: Meridium can be used to improve reliability of a single
component at a single plant, but the true value potential lies in implementing an APM solution across the plant and throughout the enterprise.
For global companies, Meridium can be implemented enterprise wide
to allow easy transfer of information across departments, plants and the
entire company.
Economics/benefits: Root-cause analysis, when used in conjunction
with a comprehensive APM program, conservatively yields benefits of
approximately $4 million per year for a typical 100-Mbpd refinery. Benefit areas include reductions in lost profit opportunity costs, avoiding
abnormal incidents, staff productivity improvements, reductions in the
maintenance budget, etc.1
Commercial installations: Meridium has been licensed at over
880 sites in 70 countries, including the refining, chemicals, power,
mining and consumer packaged goods industries.
Reference: 1 “Quantifying the ROI of an Asset Performance Management Program,” Hydrocarbon Processing, May 2007.
Reference: 1 “Quantifying the ROI of an Asset Performance Management Program,” Hydrocarbon Processing, May 2007.
Licensor: Meridium, Inc. with offices in Roanoke, Virginia, US;
Houston, Texas, US; Dubai, UAE; Walldorf, Germany; and Perth,
Australia.
Licensor: Meridium, Inc. with offices in Roanoke, Virginia, US;
Houston, Texas, US; Dubai, UAE; Walldorf, Germany; and Perth,
Australia.
Select 335 at www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com/RS
Select 336 at www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com/RS
HYDROCARBON PROCESSING April 2008
I 149
Asset Performance and Alarm Management 2008
Asset performance management
RCM and
FMEA
Risk-based Reliability
inspection analytics
RCA
Inspection Calibration Thickness
mgmt.
mgmt.
monitoring
Operator
rounds
Asset strategies
Process data
Spreadsheets/
databases
Sustainable alarm management
Description: Getting operations to be more involved in your alarm
management strategy is always a challenge but required to sustain a
world-class alarm strategy. Matrikon’s AlarmInsight for System 800xA is
an Industrial IT-Enabled offering that streamlines activities by presenting
alarm analysis and operator assistance reports contextually, in a native
format, to the people who need it most. It allows customers to enhance
their current ABB control system investment, allowing them to realize
improved operational reliability and plant safety in a sustainable way.
Users can access alarm performance KPIs and operator assistance documentation to help in decision making and root-cause analysis, thereby
ensuring continued improvement in their alarm management strategy.
Strategic approach/goals: Objectives include:
• Reduce decision and action time
• Reduce nuisance alarms and ensure operator focus on valid and
important alarms
• Unified interface for control and alarm analysis
• Optimize asset performance
• Proactive identification of plant problems through statistical analysis
• Integrate information for improved visibility
• Root-cause analysis.
Key product features: AlarmInsight for System 800xA:
• Allows access to various Matrikon Alarm Manager alarm analysis
reports through System 800xA’s plant, area, unit and tag objects
• Provides access to Matrikon Alarm management of change (MOC)
operator assistant reports. Alarm cause, effect and recommended action
data are collected in Alarm MOC and, through AlarmInsight, can be
accessed in System 800xA to assist operators in their decision making.
• Provides the infrastructure to combined System 800xA desktop
trends and Matrikon Alarm Manager alarm grid for better root-cause
analysis at the desktop
• Provides for easy integration of the two systems, is easily configured
and no programming is required.
Economic benefits: ABB’s System 800xA provides a better way to
achieve measurable productivity and profitability improvements by
extending the scope of traditional control systems to include all automation functions in a single operations and engineering environment. This
helps plants to perform smarter and better at substantial cost savings.
Matrikon’s AlarmInsight for System 800xA further extends automation system functionality to include comprehensive alarm analysis and
provide effective alarm management practices that improve safety, stability, productivity and profitability. Matrikon Alarm Manager’s MOC
module ensures that changes to alarms are correct, consistent and properly recorded to maintain the benefits of alarm management.
Commercial installations: ABB has delivered System 800xA with
Matrikon’s AlarmInsight to numerous customer sites worldwide.
Engineering
CMMS
Metrics and
scorecards
Financial
Legacy
systems
Handhelds
Thickness monitoring
Description: Understanding the current condition of equipment that
contains or manages process medium is key to minimizing safety and
environmental risk as well as unplanned failures. Meridium’s Thickness
Monitoring module provides the capability to manage large-scale corrosion and thickness monitoring programs for stationary equipment such
as piping, vessels, exchangers, tanks and boilers. Key capabilities of the
Thickness Monitoring module include the ability to calculate the minimum thickness required to safely operate the equipment, thickness
measurement data management and corrosion rate analysis, as well as
next-inspection and retirement-date calculations.
Strategic approach/goals: The biggest benefit of an integrated
technology software solution is that organizations can now react much
more dynamically to changing plant conditions than was previously
possible. Meridium’s integrated APM initiative provides:
• KPIs enabling identification of improvement opportunities
• Automated technical analysis to identify and predict failure occurrence and cause
• Supports development and continuous improvement of operational,
surveillance, maintenance and design strategies based upon best practices,
operational history and fact-based decision support
• Drives strategies back to execution systems to close the loop and
continuously improve asset performance across the enterprise.
Interfaces: Meridium leverages critical asset performance data from
ERP, CMMS, DCS and other systems, including interfaces to SAP, IBM
Maximo, Indus Passport, Inovx and Fluke analyzers, among others.
Scalability: Meridium can be used to improve the reliability of a
single component at a single plant, but the true value potential lies in
implementing an APM solution across the plant and throughout the
enterprise. For global companies, Meridium can be implemented enterprise wide to allow easy transfer of information across departments, plants
and the entire company.
Economics/benefits: Thickness monitoring, when used in conjunction with a comprehensive APM program, conservatively yields benefits
of approximately $4 million per year for a typical 100-Mbpd refinery.
Benefit areas include reductions in lost profit opportunity costs, avoidance of abnormal incidents, staff productivity improvements, reductions
in the maintenance budget, etc.1
Commercial installations: Meridium has been licensed at over
880 sites in 70 countries, including clients in the refining, chemicals,
power, mining and consumer packaged goods industries.
Reference: 1 “Quantifying the ROI of an Asset Performance Management Program,” Hydrocarbon Processing, May 2007.
Licensor: The ABB Group of companies operates in around 100
countries and employs more than 110,000 people.
Licensor: Meridium, Inc. with offices in Roanoke, Virginia, US;
Houston, Texas, US; Dubai, UAE; Walldorf, Germany; and Perth,
Australia.
Select 337 at www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com/RS
Select 338 at www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com/RS
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Unified alarm management
Description: Consolidated Alarm Management Software (CAMS) is
a unified alarm management software designed to acquire real-time alarms
and events from various systems—including Yokogawa-manufactured
systems of CENTUM DCS, Plant Resource Manager (PRM) asset management system, ProSafe-RS Safety Instrumented System and STARDOM
Network-based Control System; then unifies, sorts and delivers only the
necessary alarms to the right person at the right time. Important information such as the root-cause of alarm occurrence or role-based guidance can
also be added to the displayed message.
Strategic approach/goals: The number and variety of alarms and
events handled in plants are increasing substantially as plant operations
become more complex. This software takes two engineering approaches
to help rationalize alarms with the aim of preventing alarm flooding.
One is a practical approach that sorts out alarms and displays only
those alarms that require operator actions. The other is a fundamental
approach that allows defining only the necessary alarms in accordance
with EEMUA Publication No. 191, an industry guideline for alarm
management.1
CAMS helps users thwart the problem of alarm flooding, a potential
cause of troubles in the plant. It also provides operators with an environment that frees them of tedious repetitive alarm tasks and allows them to
focus on true process concerns.
Interfaces: CAMS has initially been designed for the operator interface
of the Yokogawa CENTUM Distributed Control Systems. Subsequent
releases will be able to interface to various OPC AE-compliant systems.
Economics/benefits: Benefits can be classified into two areas: savings
per year attributed to increased operator efficiency through workload
reduction and savings per year attributed to increased stability of the
process units. CAMS helps avoid potential safety or environmental incidents due to alarm overload, reduces the possibility of missing critical
alarms, captures critical events during plant upsets without being overwhelmed by nuisance alarms and relieves operators from tedious, repetitive
tasks giving operators more time to focus on process problems.
Commercial installations: CAMS is newly released with initial
deliveries beginning in November 2007.
References: 1 Alarm Systems: A Guide to Design, Management and
Procurement, Publication No. 191, Edition 2, The Engineering Equipment and Materials Users’ Association (EEMUA), 2007, London,
England.
“VigilantPlant Alarm Management Strategies,” ARC white paper,
January 2005.
ERTC
November 2008
13th Annual Meeting
The ERTC Annual Meeting is the premier event of
the year for Europe’s processing industry. Now in
its 13th successful year, ERTC is the only conference
capable of delivering the agenda this sector
demands with the high standards of technical
content and professionalism it expects.
Hydrocarbon Processing is proud to announce that it
has been selected yet again to provide the conference
newspapers for the 2008 ERTC Annual Meeting. This
includes plenary sessions, where strategic, economic
and political issues that will shape the future of the oil
and petrochemical industries in Europe are explored
in-depth, as well as two parallel technology sessions.
Readership is extremely high for conference
newspapers, offering a great opportunity for you to
highlight your hospitality suite, new technologies
or a technology you may be presenting. The first
day’s newspaper will be distributed in the delegates’
welcome packs when they register. The second day's
newspaper will be delivered under every delegate’s
door at the hotel.
Please contact your sales representative or
Publisher Mark Peters (Mark.Peters@GulfPub.com)
for more details.
www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com
+1 (713) 525-4615
Licensor: Yokogawa Electric Corporation, headquarters in Tokyo,
Japan, with regional headquarters in Singapore, Amersfoort, The Netherlands, and Newnan, Georgia.
Select 339 at www.HydrocarbonProcessing.com/RS
HYDROCARBON PROCESSING April 2008
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