When a process is disrupted at your facility, it costs money and time. When a process goes out of control, it can harm people, the environment, and your company’s reputation and profits. 

Abnormal Situation Management® (ASM) gives you the power to avoid these situations and reduce their impact. 

ASM is a body of knowledge and best practices developed by the Abnormal Situation Management Consortium, a Honeywell-led research and development team of 12 companies and universities. For more than 12 years, the ASM Consortium has conducted comprehensive research at member sites into root causes of incidents and ways to detect precursors of abnormal situations, prevent incidents, and more effectively manage abnormal situations before they get out of control. 

Consortium members share ASM knowledge through guidelines documents, workshops, and ongoing communication. Associate members incorporate this knowledge into their service offerings. This knowledge and expertise is also put into products and services that Honeywell develops with consortium guidance, assesses at member sites, and makes available to its customers worldwide.  

ASM Consortium work addresses three areas: prevention, early detection, and mitigation of abnormal situations. These are summarized below with a few examples of Consortium research and the resulting improvements.

• Prevention. Proactive maintenance of equipment and process tools, procedures, and training to prevent human error.
  

To gain insight into the many aspects of human error within operating environments, the consortium has researched how operators interact and communicate with one another. Studies show that, in many cases, written procedures for activities such as startup and shutdown are out of date or incomplete. Research also shows that operating companies have a significant challenge in recruiting and training new operators to replace highly experienced operators who are leaving in significant numbers. Armed with this insight from the consortium, Honeywell is providing its customers with better operator training tools and software. Many operating companies also now use Honeywell simulation technology so their operators can practice managing abnormal and infrequent situations, in just the same way that airline pilots train.

The consortium also has studied the common problem of excessive alarms, since they can cause a minor problem to escalate out of control if the operator is confused or misses vital information. There are many aspects to a comprehensive alarm management strategy, but statistical analysis of extensive consortium research at customer sites has given insight into the value of different approaches and the correct sequence of steps to achieve good management. This knowledge is being built into Experion™ PKS, as well as optional software tools and services.  

• Early Detection. Alerts to operators to give early warning of a possible abnormal situation.

The consortium has conducted extensive research for several years into the effectiveness of various advanced techniques for detection of the onset of abnormal situations. As a result, Honeywell is now deploying solutions that send the operator an alert about a potential abnormal situation well before an alarm would have occurred. In some cases, the alert has come several hours before the alarm. This type of early warning can be crucial in allowing the operator to investigate and take preemptive action to avert a major problem. 

• Mitigation. Tools, procedures, and training to help operators take swift and appropriate action.

Studies of human interaction have helped shed light on communication among plant and field operators. Research shows that they often rely on walkie-talkies to send messages about the tasks on which they coordinate their efforts. Honeywell has responded with wireless and digital technologies that allow operators to communicate electronically and avoid the problems associated with using the sometimes unreliable and unclear walkie-talkies. Honeywell also has developed technology that presents an electronic record of activities that allows operators to review their activities and identify improvements that can be made.

To better support operators in the control room as they try to mitigate an abnormal situation, the consortium has studied which tasks are involved and how operators perform them. Research reveals that operators frequently lack quick and easy access to the information they need, and they are therefore ill-equipped to quickly diagnose and manage major problems and emergencies. The consortium’s findings have led to recommendations about when, where, and how to present information on schematic displays, how to link displays, and how to sensibly arrange a hierarchy of displays to avoid excessive display call-ups. The consortium has developed more than 80 guidelines for this issue. On-site research has demonstrated that when operators follow the guidelines, they perform tasks much quicker and complete some tasks that otherwise would not be completed. The end results often have a positive financial impact. 

Only Honeywell can bring you the benefits and results of the ASM Consortium’s multi-year research integrated with the real-time control environment.

Information about the ASM Consortium can be found at www.asmconsortium.com.