Remember when alarms were hardwired and required real justification before installation? Today, enabling an alarm is as easy as checking a box. While this has drastically reduced cost and complexity, it has introduced a new challenge: alarm overload.
Technology is not the problem. It’s how we use it.
With the evolution of PLCs, DCSs, and HMI/SCADA systems, alarms can now be configured with minimal effort. But when everything is important, then nothing is. Excess alarms create a noisy environment where real problems are buried in a flood of irrelevant signals. The outcome? Alarm fatigue, missed events, and delayed operator response often lead to increased downtime and compromised safety. If your operators have resorted to mashing the alarm reset button as a first step, rather than understanding the problem, you are likely suffering from poor alarm management practices.
Let’s talk about best practices.
First In Fault: Identifying the Root
When multiple alarms cascade in rapid succession, it’s easy to lose track of the true origin of a fault. Capturing the first in fault (the very first alarm triggered in a sequence) is key. It often points to the root cause and prevents teams from chasing symptoms. This foundational concept is essential for accurate downtime tracking, OEE loss categorization, and root cause analysis (RCA).
We recommend structuring control logic and SCADA systems to detect and clearly log first in fault conditions. Whether it’s through alarm suppression, interlock status tracking, or sequenced logic, the goal is to isolate and highlight the initiating event.
Rationalization: Less Is More
Alarm rationalization remains one of the most impactful practices for improving operator effectiveness. It’s a cross-functional effort involving engineering, operations, and maintenance teams. Each alarm should answer three questions:
- What does it mean?
- What should the operator do?
- What happens if nothing is done?
By filtering out redundant, low-value, or non-actionable alarms, and consolidating similar ones, we can reduce alarm clutter. Don’t let your high-performance SCADA screens become high-noise distractions.
Visualization and Annunciation
Modern SCADA platforms offer incredible flexibility in how alarms are displayed and acknowledged. Use it wisely.
- Prioritize alarms visually with color coding, dynamic filtering, optional animations for critical alarms, and clear timestamps.
- Group alarms logically by asset, system, or line, so operators aren’t jumping around screens to understand the situation.
- Avoid alarm storms with smart filtering, delay timers, and alarm shelving to give operators breathing room during process upsets.
- Alert and notify intelligently by leveraging email, SMS, or voice notifications only when necessary. Ensure proper workflows are followed to avoid unintentional continual alerts even after conditions have cleared, or escalation features if an issue is present for too long.
From Reactive to Predictive: The Analytics Payoff
Effective alarm management doesn’t just help operations, it can feed your analytics.
Capturing first in fault, along with clear alarm priorities and timestamps, enables accurate calculation of:
- MTTR (Mean Time to Repair)
- MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures)
- Automated downtime categorization for OEE tracking
- Asset-based alarm frequency and patterns
Over time, this data becomes the foundation for predictive maintenance strategies and reliability-centered design improvements. Alarms become more than noise, they become insight.
Programming Matters
On the PLC/DCS side, good alarm management starts at the source:
- Program alarms intentionally. Just because you can create an alarm doesn’t mean you have to.
- Use structured logic to suppress downstream alarms during known transitions (startups, changeovers, etc.).
- Implement watchdogs and signal quality checks to reduce false positives.
These small programming choices make a big difference on the plant floor, in the control room, and in your analytics platforms.
Four Key Takeaways
- First in fault detection is essential for root cause analysis and reliability metrics.
- Rationalization should be a collaborative process. Operators, engineers, and maintenance must all have input.
- Visual design, annunciation, and alerts matter. How an alarm is seen and heard affects response time.
- Alarms are a data source. Optimize and maintain them like you would any critical plant asset.
The Future of Alarm Rationalization: Context at the Speed of AI
As manufacturing systems continue to generate more data and become increasingly complex, the next frontier of alarm management lies in real-time contextualization powered by generative AI.
Imagine a world where an alarm is not just a flashing red box and a cryptic tag name, but an intelligent prompt that knows your machine, your process, and your people. We’re entering an era where AI can intercept alarms and events as they occur, cross-reference them with machine documentation, historical behavior, maintenance records, and even real-time process conditions.
Here’s what this could mean in practice:
- Interpret the alarm code: AI recognizes the tag or fault code and maps it to the relevant equipment and process.
- Reference documentation: It pulls the right section from manuals or SOPs automatically.
- Suggest resolutions: Based on past incidents and tribal knowledge, it provides actionable steps, not just alerts.
- Speed up MTTR: With immediate, contextual support, operators respond faster and with greater confidence.
- Log enriched events: All this information becomes part of the alarm event history, enabling better analytics and future insights.
This shift doesn’t replace your existing alarm rationalization process, it enhances it. Where rationalization today focuses on reducing noise, AI takes it a step further by making every alarm smarter, more meaningful, and more human-friendly.
The ultimate goal? Turn every alarm into a moment of clarity, not confusion.
The Bottom Line?
Alarm systems are a reflection of your operational discipline. Done right, they can enhance safety, reduce downtime, and provide a roadmap for smarter operations.
Whether your facility is battling alarm noise or looking to drive more value from alarm data, we can help guide the way, from standard control logic to advanced AI-augmented predictive maintenance or another solution in between that is the best fit for your situation. If your alarms are working against you, rather than for you, reach out to LSI to see how we have helped others achieve operational performance improvements through proper alarm management.