Message Management Facility for Industrial Alarm Prioritization
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Solution Overview
Problem
Industrial process control systems face challenges in managing the overwhelming volume of alarm messages during plant failures, leading to potential human and equipment harm due to the inability of existing systems to effectively prioritize and filter alarms, resulting in operators being overwhelmed by a 'shower' of messages.
Innovation Solution
A message management facility is introduced that routes, monitors, and prioritizes messages by interposing management functionality between control processors and destinations, including dynamic reprioritization and suppression criteria to manage alarm showers, reducing the load on controllers and ensuring critical alarms are not masked or delayed.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If alarm prioritization and filtering functionality is implemented by the control processor, then operators can assess plant status more effectively, but the control processor becomes overwhelmed during alarm showers
Solution Approach 1:
The alarm management functionality is segmented from the control processor and placed in the message manager. The message manager independently handles alarm prioritization, filtering, and routing without burdening the control processor, thus resolving the contradiction between operator assessment capability and processor load.
Solution Approach 2:
A message manager is introduced as an intermediary component between the control processor and the operator interface. This mediator handles the complex alarm management tasks including prioritization and filtering, allowing the control processor to focus on control functions while the message manager manages information presentation to operators.
2Loss of information
If all alarm messages are transmitted to operators during plant failures, then complete information is provided, but operators become overwhelmed and critical alarms may be missed
Solution Approach 1:
The message manager implements partial action by selectively transmitting only the most critical alarms to operators during alarm showers. Using criteria such as alarm priority levels and suppression rules, it filters out non-essential alarms while ensuring critical information is not lost, thus maintaining operator responsiveness without information overload.
Solution Approach 2:
The system dynamically changes the parameter of alarm transmission based on system state. During normal operation, more comprehensive alarm information is transmitted. During alarm showers, the transmission parameters are adjusted to prioritize critical alarms only, using configurable suppression criteria and priority thresholds to manage information flow.
3Device complexity
If alarm priorities are fixed and changed only through human intervention, then system configuration is simple, but the system cannot dynamically respond to changing plant conditions
Solution Approach 1:
The alarm priority system is made dynamic through the message manager, which automatically adjusts alarm priorities based on changing plant conditions, alarm patterns, and system state. The message manager can dynamically reprioritize alarms during alarm showers and adapt to different operating modes without requiring manual reconfiguration, thus resolving the contradiction between configuration simplicity and dynamic adaptability.
Data Source
AI summary
A message management facility is described herein that is hosted by a networked node, in a process control network environment, that is separate from a control processor. The message management facility routes a stream of messages received from the control processor to a set of destinations on a supervisory network. By interposing the message management facility on a node that is interposed, in a message steam, between alarm message sources (control processors) and alarm message sinks (workstations, printers, historians), a number of additional functions can be implemented to carry out a number of advanced functions. Examples of such functions include: table-based routing of a single alarm to a number of destinations on an application network, suppressing alarm showers by applying a criterion to received messages when shower conditions have been sensed, invoking commands based upon a configured category assigned to particular identified messages prior to delivery of the message to its final destination, and invoking actions in response to event/mode status changes (including re-prioritizing alarms).