Alarm Management: Critical for Safety and Efficiency
In the era of pneumatic controls, alarms were few and costly. Today, alarms are essentially ‘free’ with an unintended consequence of overuse. This can hinder an operator’s ability to respond to abnormal conditions effectively. Operators often mute speakers to deal with constant interruptions, important alerts go unnoticed, and potential disasters become a looming threat.
With technology advancing and systems growing increasingly complex, effective alarm management is imperative for safety, efficiency, and maintaining order in the digital world.
Alarm Philosophy serves as the cornerstone of the ISA 18.2 Standard. It calls for the creation and upkeep of a guiding document that meticulously outlines the purpose, objectives, roles, responsibilities, and overall strategy concerning alarms. This document acts as the North Star, providing clarity and direction. The Alarm Philosophy establishes a system for prioritizing alarms and includes guidelines for commissioning alarms to ensure seamless integration into the existing system. It also covers training requirements for personnel handling alarms, ensuring proficiency and safety.
Let Apperture be your partner at every stage of your alarm management journey.
It may be time to take an honest inventory of your organization’s skills, technology capabilities, and operational certainty. Our Managed Services professionals can be an extension of your team—focused on improving operations and lowering costs by minimizing process downtime and risk. That’s why we focus on your objectives, your timetable, your ability to do the work and get trained, and your organization’s appetite for change.
Technology Does Not Stand Still, Nor Should We…Or You
We speak your language—regardless of your process or platform—and we understand your challenges. We listen, ask the right questions, then apply best in class solutions to meet your challenges, based on our team of hands-on, experienced engineers and solutions consultants.
“I get the most satisfaction from customer enablement—understanding my customers, interpreting their needs, and applying advanced technologies for their benefit. I appreciate the opportunity to explain the amazing tools they have today and how best to leverage them to gain even more value in the near term.” Learn more about Boyd.
“As one of our MES Practice Leaders, I spend my days deeply embedded in my specialty, but I’m also aware that while many of our customers are familiar with the terminology, they do not necessarily know where to start to solve their manufacturing challenges. I hope to pique your interest by addressing some of the most commonly asked questions about MES…in a brief, easy-to-understand manner.”
What Value Can an MES Bring to Any (and Every) Manufacturing Organization?
Manufacturing Execution Systems (MES) provide governance of the manual activities that are part of a process manufacturing facility. While automation is certainly a part of most process industries, many manufactured products are produced with steps or tasks performed by humans, as well. There are a number of reasons for this: sites that make many products, making it difficult to automate; products that require ‘in-process’ verifications; and products with variable inputs. This is true for most industries—from pharmaceuticals to battery production to yogurt. Wherever steps are performed without automation, it’s the job of someone in a quality-focused role to question all that can possibly go wrong. Did they use the right materials? Did we establish the required accountability for the production steps? Were the materials in good condition (spoiled milk is still milk)?
Ultimately, the manufacturer has to prove that they produce something consistently—so the customer/consumer has less need to test it and is more confident when they buy it. Quality issues can impact price, involve health or safety questions, and in general, impact the business. The integrity of the manufacturing data is critical—and MES drives that integrity. MES systems can also help lay the ‘data foundation’ for a manufacturing dashboard to help discover and address other manufacturing deficiencies, such as excess hold times.
Who Uses MES Systems?
Many industries use MES systems—they can be either discrete or process manufacturers. The requirements of the MES system are different for each and are often served by different vendors. Discrete manufacturing can be thought of as something like an assembly process. For example, a car needs to be assembled with all of the correct parts (SUV fenders do NOT go on a sedan), all of the parts of a particular model need to be assembled the correct way, and the result is a finite number of sellable units.
Process manufacturing is something that cannot be taken apart or sold in different quantities. Whether you are manufacturing food, paint, or pharmaceuticals, the materials/ingredients have to be mixed, reacted, heated/cooled, and ‘processed’ according to a very specific recipe, with a list of input ingredients. Within process manufacturing, MES systems are most common in processes that make ‘batches’ of product and where there are more manual steps. The need for certainty of the repeatability aspect makes it almost a requirement in pharmaceuticals and biotech, but there is growing demand in the chemical and food industries, as well.
All of this information is integrated with company business systems to support those in supply chain, finance, and quality—who drive orders into the MES and get data back—helping them understand the amount of material in production, produced, and collected as scrap material, for instance.
You are invited to a day of knowledge-sharing sessions with Apperture, Emerson, and R.E. Mason life sciences experts. This workshop is ideal for operations management professionals, as well as those involved with technology transfer & commercialization, data management & visualization, process development, and manufacturing intelligence & analytics. Download flyer to view agenda.
When:
Wednesday, August 30th 10:00AM – 4:30PM (lunch, open house, & networking)
Apperture Solutions helps manufacturing and industrial companies harness data and automation technologies to reap the benefits of Industry 4.0. Through key practice areas and implementation services—led by senior engineers and their dedicated teams—we architect custom solutions using best-in-class tools and techniques, overseeing the entire process in collaboration with our customers.
We enable your data to tell better stories—through exploration, analytics, modeling, and visualization—in order to provide valuable insights and help you drive significant improvements in your operations.
We ensure efficient, safe, reliable, and sustainable manufacturing processes—regardless of where you are in your MOM journey. Our solutions improve materials tracking, increase awareness of work-in-progress materials, manage equipment states, and protect your data’s integrity.
Let us address your production optimization needs with the latest digital simulation tools and advanced process control technologies. Leveraging our experience, we can improve process performance while delivering safer and more cost-effective operations.
Our vision is to help our customers obtain a new perspective or wider viewpoint to optimize their manufacturing or industrial operations. We’d like them to become enlightened with new information, with the ability to gain insights and make more informed decisions. We are focused, expert, and entirely committed to this goal.
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Take the next step to adopt best-in-class tools and techniques to reap the benefits of Industry 4.0.
Apperture Solutions is a new consulting and implementation firm focused on guiding customers through the myriad of solutions available to leverage factory automation technologies and improve plant operations. Its team of experts are adept at architecting customized solutions using best-in-class tools and techniques, implementing those solutions, and overseeing the entire process—in collaboration with its customers—to reap the benefits of Industry 4.0.
Mark Feldpausch, Senior Vice President, comments on the company name, “The concept behind Apperture is to help customers obtain a new perspective or wider viewpoint in order to optimize their operations. We want them to be able to gain insights and make more informed decisions based on visibility to a wider set of data, within context. Our methodologies are designed to help customers connect with their company’s or plant’s vision by leveraging both existing and burgeoning technologies. We want them to trust that more is possible than they previously thought and that we are the right organization to partner with them for the long term.”
According to Barry Coultas, Apperture’s Business Development Leader, “We are entirely committed to our customers’ success—from ideation through implementation and post-project oversight. Our team of process engineers and technology professionals have decades of experience working with all of the top vendor products, as well as emerging modeling and AI tools, in addition to various industry software products.”
Along with the company’s announcement, it is launching three main areas of solutions delivery: Data Enablement, Manufacturing Operations Management, and Production Optimization. These Practice Areas will be led by senior engineers and their dedicated teams to continue servicing existing customers, as well as provide new solutions to both existing and new customers. The Apperture consulting and implementation teams have specialized expertise in a variety of industries. The company headquarters is located in Durham, North Carolina.
About Apperture
Apperture Solutions is a consulting and implementation services firm for manufacturing companies looking to leverage their data and best-in-class technologies to make more informed decisions—from the plant floor, up through all levels of production. As process experts, we understand the benefits of integrating silos of data across the organization and transforming that data into actionable information. Our goal is to build bridges across the network to get the right information to the right people and ultimately achieve positive outcomes for all stakeholders.
Unlike other system integrators or consultants who are narrowly focused on a single solution or tool, we take a holistic view of operational procedures and critical equipment to achieve a competitive advantage for the long term. Apperture Solutions originated from R.E. Mason, and we possess the financial stability and reach to take on any greenfield, integration, or multi-site project, with confidence.
