Alarm Facilities
Prodigy provides sophisticated alarm monitoring, reporting and logging facilities that enable operators to react quickly to problems arising and to analyse faults over any given time period.
Prodigy's Alarm Manager monitors the state of all signal values that have alarm limits define
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AlarmsAlarms are logged to:
Alarms can be set to auto-accept when they revert and this can be configured separately for each alarm state. Alarms can be analysed system wide or on a batch by batch basis and can be filtered on a number of criteria including:
Alarm Schedules allow different alarm limits at different times throughout a process run:
Alarm DisplaysDisplays alarms & events along with the time they became active and the current state of the alarm.
Alarm AcceptanceRestricted to permitted users.Automatic alarm acceptance. Recorded with time stamp and name of operator to provide full acceptance history. Configurable StrategiesFour alarm regions.Deviation alarms. Time delayed alarms. Alarm priorities. Definable as part of signal characteristics. Configurable as Alarm Schedules for different product criteria. Can be disabled during production changeovers, run-up etc. AnnunciatorsUnlimited distributed annunciators.Can trigger other events, e.g. faxed reports. SMS and email alarm alerts.
Can be recorded as part of batch information. |
When an alarm condition occurs the alarm manager notifies all other parts of the system that have an interest in that alarm.
This may be an audible siren, a beacon, a printer, an on screen display and so on. In addition, the alarm is logged to both the continuous and batch alarm databases and to selected Prodigy alarm banners.
The Alarm Manager records the following information:-
- The alarm state that has been entered or left.
- The date and time of the change in alarm condition (including alarms being acknowledged).
- The value of the signal at the time the condition altered (including signal values becoming unknown or disabled).
- The name of the operator who accepted the alarm
Prodigy allows alarm levels to be set for Very Low, Low, High and Very High, along with descriptive text for each condition. Alarms can be absolute or deviation from set point. In addition, sophisticated tools allow alarms to be applied to such things as the rate of change of a signal value, or on the length of time a signal remains in a given state.
Spurious alarms can be minimised by applying alarm hysteresis or marking them as timed alarms, which will only sound when the alarm condition has been exceeded for a specified time period.
Alarm Display
The Alarm Display provides an instant view of all current alarms, their alarm priority and the live value of the signal that is in alarm. The Alarm Display has two modes, Banner and Full Screen.
In Banner mode the Alarm Display shows the oldest unaccepted alarm at the bottom of a two-line window and the most recently accepted alarm on the line above this. If there is more than one unaccepted alarm the alarm message is followed by some text that indicates how many other alarms exist.
The Alarm Banner can be docked at the top or bottom of the screen and always remains visible even when running other programs. The operator must use the banner to accept any alarms and if security is implemented they must enter their user ID and password. This prevents unauthorised personnel from accepting alarms.
In Full Screen mode, the Alarm Display shows the current state of all signals that are in alarm, sorted either chronologically or in priority order and optionally filtered on criteria such as category, plant area or alarm type.
The columns displayed can be customised and the alarms sorted on any column. Alarms can be accepted in any order or accepted by group or priority etc.
Alarm acceptance can be configured to require an operator comment to be entered before acceptance takes place.
As well as alarms, the Prodigy Alarm Manager also caters for Events. These are information messages generated by, for example, control programs.
These messages are displayed, logged and accepted in the same way as alarms. In addition they may be set up to appear for a fixed length of time before being removed automatically.
Historic Alarm Report
Prodigy provides an Alarm History Viewer which is an interactive tool for viewing the alarm history database.
This displays alarm information such as date, time , signal, description, acceptance, text and comments on screen in table format. A toolbar provides comprehensive filter and sort options to make it easy to select relevant alarms for viewing and printing as required.
Alarm Scheduler
Sometimes different alarm limits need to be applied at different times throughout a process and at other times the alarms may need to be disabled altogether perhaps during a plant startup or shutdown period.
Prodigy uses Alarm Schedules to cover these situations. Any number of alarm schedules can be created and Prodigy can be programmed to automatically swap between these different schedules at any time throughout the process.
SMS & Email Facilities
Prodigy provides a number of ways to keep in touch with your business using your mobile phone or email access. Read more information on SMS & Email facilities
Audio & Spoken Alarms
In addition to standard options of silent, systems sound and playing .wav & .mp3 audio files alarms can also be "spoken". This option uses a natural voice (freely available from Microsoft or purchasable from other vendors) to speak the alarm text of the current active alarm.
An example application would be automating calls for parts and maintenance over a factory public address system or "Tannoy".
