Alarm Management

The Alarm Management market research delivers current market analysis plus a five-year market and technology forecast. It is available in multiple editions including worldwide, all regions, and most major countries.  

Alarm Management Systems: Compliance to Standards Drives Investment 

ARC Advisory Group research on the alarm management market reveals that reliable alarm management continues to be a focus in industrial process plants around the world. This is driven largely by the need to conform to current standards and best practices like ISA 18.2, EEMUA 191, and IEC 62682 and pushed by governments and insurers. The primary goal of these standards and practices is to develop a continuous improvement approach to alarm management and ease the “alarm burden” on operators, so they only see the information they need to see, particularly during process upsets or other abnormal situations.

Alarm Management Strategic Issues 

In addition to providing a five-year market forecast, the alarm management market research provides detailed quantitative current market data and addresses key strategic issues as follow.

Have Tight Integration with the Control System

DCS suppliers have made significant progress in expanding their scope of applications and solutions beyond traditional DCS functionality. This includes applications such as alarm management. Many of the large alarm management suppliers today are also DCS suppliers. All DCS suppliers are involved in alarm management in some way, whether they offer their own alarm management solution or offer very tight integration with a third-party solution. Every DCS supplier also offers some manner of services related to alarm management. The level of sophistication of these services varies and should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. 

DCS suppliers tout tighter integration with their process automation systems and a growing list of services and solutions capabilities to assist end users in their alarm management projects. DCS suppliers also offer a wider range of complementary applications and services, with alarm management being just one aspect of a full offering of applications and solutions to cover the entire spectrum of process automation.

Avoid a Functional Replacement When Modernizing or Migrating Alarm Management System

Avoid just doing a “functional replacement” of the alarm management system. During a process automation system migration project, for example, many end users will simply implement a like-for-like replacement of functions in the legacy DCS for the functions in the new system. Any new alarm management solution will most likely offer a higher degree of functionality than the solution it is replacing and, more importantly, provide a path to using some more advanced technologies and functions outside of the scope of alarm management.

Use Alarm Management as a Path to Big Data, Analytics, and Procedural Automation

A new or upgraded alarm management solution could potentially help support many transformative technologies. Two technologies that come to mind are Big Data analytics and procedural automation. As one end user told ARC, “The information from a new alarm management system implementation can be used in the context of a data analytics solution. Many large plants are finding hidden value in some of these masked abnormal situations–ones that are near misses, degrading situations. To find those near misses, you must have event context.” 

Calculated values could also be used in the context of an ISA 106 application for procedural automation. Many end users are finding value in automating procedures that were previously performed manually. This also overlaps into the realm of state-based control, in which process automation systems can dynamically react to changing states in the process without operator intervention.