1. Best Practice: Alarming for Wonderware System Platform
Altmar du Toit
Wonderware Southern Africa

2. Agenda
What is alarms and events?
Alarms in System Platform
New Alarm Control
Demo
Conclusion

3. Abnormal Condition Normal Condition
What is an Alarm
In general an alarm is a condition – in particular an abnormal condition
Example:
Abnormal Condition
Normal Condition

4. Start Pump Event Occured What is an Event?
A detectable occurrence which does not need operator response
Example:
Start Pump
Event Occured

5. Alarms and Events
Grouped
Prioritized
Distributed
Visualized
Stored

6. Agenda
What is alarms and events?
Alarms in System Platform
New Alarm Controls
Demo
Conclusion

7. Alarms in System Platform
Consumer
Galaxy
Galaxy  Objects  different alarm limits  consumers 
Consumer
Consumer

8. Which is the provider?
Archestra doesn’t care which is provider – it will automatically pull the alarms
Best practice – Make the view client provider – It is easier to configure and if you loose the AOS you can

9. Best practice planning alarm system
Determine Alarms before hand
Use IO/Lists
Communicate with the process department
Do not alarm on every single I/O only the absolute necessary ones
Prioritize your alarms (Critical to Info)
Build the critical alarms into your templates to enforce standards through to all the instances
Plan the areas before hand and build your model accordingly
How will you visualize the alarms?

10. Where do we store the alarms
Historian! – Good – Easy configuration
Bad – Loose the hist loose data
AOS – Redundant – When you loose data it will buffer. Not easy to configure

11. Alarms in a Network Environment
Different Alarm Providers
View1
View2
View3
AOS 01
AOS 02
Historian
PLC
PLC
PLC

12. Historical Alarms
Benefit of using multiples alarm providers
No historical data loss
Minimize Network Traffic
No single point of failure

13. Historical Alarms and redundancy
Alarms in redundant configuration :
Described in Implementing Redundancy section of the deployment guide
Also refer to Technote 430

14. Agenda
What is alarms and events?
Alarms in System Platform
New Alarm Controls
Demo
Conclusion

15. New Alarm Controls Alarms are viewed in the new Alarm Client Controls.
The new alarm client can be found in the graphic toolbox

16. New Alarm Controls
The Client Control can be embedded and configured in the graphic symbol editor
New Client Control tools are included in the graphic symbol editor

17. New Alarm Controls
Once the alarm control is embedded it can be configured

18. New Alarm Controls
Alarms can be viewed as Current or Historical

19. New Alarm Controls
Alarm Colours, Column Details, Query Filters, Time Settings, Run Time Behaviour, Data Binding and Event properties can be configured

20. Best practice visualizing alarms
If you have to use popups only use them for the absolutely critical alarms
Show alarm page on menu bar and show critical alarms only
Configure the alarm system to be dynamic
Show alarm drill down to area and show the page with the critical alarm

21. Demo
DEMO

22. Agenda
What is alarms and events?
Alarms in System Platform
New Alarm Controls
Demo
Conclusion

23. Conclusion Distinguish between alarms and events
Plan your model before hand – alarms are grouped according to areas
Prioritise alarms according to the severity of the alarm
Choose the correct alarm provider for your site topology
Store alarm database to the historian
Make it as easy as possible for the user to acknowledge the alarms visually

24. Questions
Questions