Getting attention of operator..

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Cold Fusion

Senior Member
Location
way north
Beacon flashes while any alarm is active. Unfortunately another alarm is active that they can't make go away until a motor is replaced. ...
Let me see if I understand. There is a continuous alarm that has been in for long enough that the operators essentially have been trained to ignore alarms. And you are thinking that something is wrong because they are ignoring an alarm? Do I have this right?

cf
 
Location
NE (9.06 miles @5.9 Degrees from Winged Horses)
Occupation
EC - retired
They sit in front of screen that flashes each new alarm that they must acknowledge. Any active alarm scrolls across the bottom of the screen every few seconds. The point is they acknowledged the low pressure warning, then did nothing. A couple days earlier they complained to my help about a motion sensor on an auger that alarmed and shut down some motors. Message that must be acknowledged states in part "Check chain". The chain was laying on the ground. No one bothered to look. You do have valid point...forget the audible or visual reminder cause they won't look anyway.
 

kwired

Electron manager
Location
NE Nebraska
Message that must be acknowledged states in part "Check chain". The chain was laying on the ground. No one bothered to look.

Maybe they expect the system to call you whenever there is an alarm that way they don't have to do anything except acknowledge the alarm.
 

hurk27

Senior Member
any alarm system is only as good as the persons responsible in answering them, if it is training that is lacking then this is what needs addressing, if it is employee level control, then maybe a system of only authorize person being able to silence an alarm has to implemented at differant levels, this would maybe require passwords or key switches type of control, if this is just a fact that employees not doing their job, then this is a management problem and needs a chain of authority to be implemented and stuck to.

No alarm system will ever over come management problems. they will just look for some one else to blame.
 

kwired

Electron manager
Location
NE Nebraska
Maybe they expect the system to call you whenever there is an alarm that way they don't have to do anything except acknowledge the alarm.

No alarm system will ever over come management problems. they will just look for some one else to blame.

My previous post although is partially joking is in reality all too true. Many workers in any setting nowadays think that anything outside of what they normally do is not part of their job and they are not going to do it. Then they wonder why the new guy that is not afraid to take on responsibility and go beyond normal functions from time to time ends up being their supervisor someday when they have been there for a much longer time. Maybe fixing the problem was not the operators responsibility but if he is the one that acknowledges the alarm then he should at least be responsible for reporting the problem to the proper person.
 

Jraef

Moderator, OTD
Staff member
Location
San Francisco Bay Area, CA, USA
Occupation
Electrical Engineer
Union, non-union, it doesn't make much difference in my opinion. People who are prone to ignore warnings are ubiquitous.

I once designed an operator panel for a rock crushing operation. They had a problem with operators ignoring warnings on the nice new Touch Screen HMI, so the owner wanted an old-fashioned push button panel with red illuminated Push-Pull operators. I set it up so that any time a conveyor or machine ran or stopped out of sequence, ALL of the 48 red lights would flash on the console at a slow strobe rate; so annoying that they would have to pay heed to it.

6 months later I got called out because the PLC was not working. I went through my trouble shooting and found that several of the relay output cards had failed; welded relay contacts. But the failed outputs were only going to the LED pilot lights, how the heck was this happening? I replaced 4 cards, ran the PLC and ALL of the lights were flashing all of the time! Turns out someone had started systems in a different sequence because they felt they knew better than the program I had made (at the very specific instructions of the owner). But of course since it was out of sequence, that made all the lights flash. They had been running it for 6 months like that, just plain wore out the relay outputs!
 

wdemos

Member
Location
Commerce, Mich.
Checked up on latest project to see how/if everthing was working. Operators said everything great. OK. Went to office to speak with manager & confirm fuel usage when I noticed the office HMI indicated low boiler pressure since 10:10 AM. It was 2:30 PM. A buzzer load enough to wake the dead sounds every 15 minutes on active alarms. The alarm message has to be confirmed when it first pops up. What else can I do to get their attention?

I don't understand why their boiler pressure would be low unless they have insufficient capacity or the plant is being operated in manual.

If the plant is in automatic I would make certain what you are seeing in the office and with respects to the annunciator actually represents what is happening on the operating floor. "Operators said everything great" Maybe it was. (never assume)

If they are running the plant in manual it appears they simply not on their toes.
 
Tough nut. Life long endeavour. Hard not to glom all bad traits of all operators into one cesspool (these operators) as if all operators exhibit all bad traits all the time without fail. Keep trying to find out what they need to get the job done, they all won’t have the same answer some will repond resistance is futile others will be annoyed your asking some will genuinely want to help and occasionally one will actually give you the answer or tidbit you need to get your job done (oddly enough the answer comes from the unexpected source on a regular basis ie hardly ever under the same rock. Any way that being said alarm wise different is important and if alarms are frequent eventually everyone becomes complacent think “baby crying” the only person capable of responding to every cry as if it is an emergency is the mother and eventually she learns to sleep through it. For an alarm to be effective it has to happen infrequently or it becomes backround noise 5 alarms per shift if things are steady state. Things that happen informationally should not ring or flash the main horn, alarms that mean do something should not ring the same flash or horn as the “Oh boy were in trouble ones!!!” Keep working with the watch standers eventually you’ll either get closer to the response your looking for or you’ll just get numb too.

good luck
 
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__dan

Senior Member
I walk through the chiller plant and the chillers are screaming, running hard, no alarm necessary. I find the guys and try to tell them 'the building is kicking your butt', condenser water temp is up and they're running two cooling tower fans with two off and the third tower short cycling doing four starts / hour, in mild weather. The guys don't see it as a problem but they get insulted when I bring it to their attention.

High water alarms on the sewage lift station - did not get acknowledged for maybe a week and hundreds of them in memory crashed the bas. It runs four chillers when it is supposed to have two in standby. I find four chillers running and try to tell the guys it's wrong. Response - 'let them run'. Had to power down reset the bas to get two chillers, unplug it and plug it back in.
 

TxEngr

Senior Member
Location
North Florida
Alarm management is a big problem. You want to alarm things but soon the operator is overwhelmed and learns to ignore alarms resulting in damaged equipment. This is a battle that is fought every day in most plants around the world.

From personal experience a two pronged attack helps:
First - give the operator that ignored the alarm days off . He will come back much more concerned since it cost him money. This is much more effective than firing. Other operators learn from this as well.
Second - perform a review of the alarms and try to set up a tiered alarm system to help the operators understand the significance of alarms.

Just my 2 cents.

b.p.
 

johnd_125

New member
The operators ignoring the alarms maybe a symptom, not the problem. IME, decisions made by manager-types in planning meetings about control system schemes often lead to this sort of thing.

You might wanna check:
1. Are the alarms necessary? Get rid of the unnecessary ones or call them "cautions" and don't give as much significance to them.
2. Are the alarms' control elements working properly? Are pressure switches set right and operating correctly, valves opening, etc.?
3. Should the alarms be doing something automatically, such as shut something down, that WILL get someone's attention?
4. Are there exterior variables, such as plant air pressure, that are affecting the performance of the equipment?

Good luck
 

K8MHZ

Senior Member
Location
Michigan. It's a beautiful peninsula, I've looked
Occupation
Electrician
I pulled the lamp out. :grin:

I did an engine swap and removed the entire engine computer and the light still stayed on so out came the lamp.

Now if you ignore the check engine lights in some vehicles they will fail to start after a programmed number of starts and will not start up again until a dealership repairs the vehicle and (using a code supplied via Internet) commands the computer to allow a re-start.

Maybe that's the solution. Program the process to halt if warnings have been ignored after a certain number of consecutive occurrences.
 
Location
NE (9.06 miles @5.9 Degrees from Winged Horses)
Occupation
EC - retired
...Maybe that's the solution. Program the process to halt if warnings have been ignored after a certain number of consecutive occurrences.

Programed it to allow 30 minutes, then a message displays for them to note any active alarm in the operators log. A similar mesage appears on the managers HMI noting the extended response time. He can deal with it however he wants after that.

Minor side: Program the PLC first then the HMI.. If the HMI looks for something that isn't on the PLC it thinks it has a communications error and you no longer have control via the HMI.
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