Air Products Realizes Multiple Significant Gains With Alarm Management

Proper management of alarms and alarm data can be a significant source of “hidden capacity” in a plant, as Air Products and Chemicals Inc (APCI) discovered when they implemented a comprehensive alarm management program at their Calvert City, KY ethylene vinyl acetate plant.

Air Products was looking to make three improvements to their plant performance: a reduction in off-spec product, an increase in capacity by reducing cycle time and, due to reassignment of duties of the controlroom staff, a better way to present and prioritize alarms.

Complicating matters was a 20-year-old DCS with no built-in alarm management mechanism. It would log alarm information directly to printers and text files, but users could not electronically access data such as alarm summaries, and were not able to perform more complex alarm analyses. A multi-million-dollar upgrade or replacement of the system was not an option.

APCI needed a relatively low-cost solution that would work with their plant’s legacy DCS to turn underutilized masses of alarm data into useful industrial intelligence and unlock the operation’s hidden capacity. In 2003, APCI partnered with Matrikon Inc to implement their award-winning ProcessGuard alarm management product at Calvert City.

ONE PRODUCT, THREE SOLUTIONS

Matrikon’s ProcessGuard solution provided a grip on alarm data in three very different ways in order to meet APCI’s requirements.

In the first part of the solution, metering alarm data is used to reduce off-spec product. Alarm messages with metering information were captured by the software, which then exported it into Excel reports. That prepared data is then used to identify meters which are not performing correctly, so APCI can pick out problem meters before a batch is made. By catching metering problems early, it was expected that APCI could reduce waste and faulty product.

The second aspect of the solution is an effort to increase overall capacity by reducing process cycle time. Sequencing data is captured by ProcessGuard and stored in batch records containing information on cycle time, phases, steps and parameters associated with the quality of the phase. This data had previously been transferred manually, with resulting inaccurate and missed data. With complete, accurate data available electronically, discrepancies in cycle times for batches, phases or steps can be easily identified and the root causes of these discrepancies can be pinpointed and rectified. Case Study: Air Products and Chemicals Air Products realizes multiple significant gains with alarm management.

Finally, an overall alarm rationalization was performed, and a state-of-the-art alarm management program implemented. Air Products used the software to identify alarm problems, reduce frequency of alarms, and rank alarm data by frequency. Plant management and DCS technicians met daily and reviewed the previous day’s top 20 alarms, identified obvious nuisance alarms and addressed them by changing alarm limits, deadbands, etc. as needed. Once the majority of these chattering alarms were corrected, the software was used to identify parent/child relationships between alarms. Each parent/child group was then analyzed with an eye to long-term process improvement.

PLANT WIDE BENEFITS

Following commissioning and implementation of these three solutions, each of the targeted areas saw substantial improvements with direct operational and bottom-line benefits.