Concepts

Tasks

Settings

Alarm Notification

You can have APM notify users whenever an indicator on an asset is outside of a normal range. Users can see indicator warnings and alarms in the Inspection Management view on the site.

As indicator readings are recorded, APM evaluates each one to determine if an alarm should be raised. When this happens, it is important that users be made aware that there has been a change in the condition of the equipment they are monitoring. Notification has three aspects:

•	Indicator notification: APM flags the indicator that has the alarm or warning

•	Asset notification: APM flags the asset that owns the indicator

•	Asset hierarchy notification: APM displays the alarm information in the asset hierarchy on the Inspection Management view

To prevent users from being inundated with non-critical warnings and alarms, you can set up a minimum alarm notification ranking. APM uses the alarm type and asset priority rankings to calculate the alarm notification ranking for each warning and alarm. This ranking tells APM when to push indicator warnings and alarms up to parent assets for display on the asset hierarchy. To do this:

•	Enter alarm types for the indicator states (for example, Warning, Alarm, and Critical). The alarm type describes the severity of the state of an indicator and ranks it numerically relative to the other states.

•	Enter numeric rankings for the consequence priorities you have set up

•	Enter a minimum alarm notification ranking

To calculate the minimum alarm notification ranking, APM multiplies the alarm type ranking by the asset priority ranking. Whenever this ranking is equal to or higher than the minimum alarm notification ranking, APM displays the alarm on the parent asset.

For example, you might have:

•	Alarm Types: Warning (1), Alarm (5), and Critical (10)

•	Asset Priority Rankings: Normal (1) and Critical (5)

•	Minimum Alarm Notification Ranking: (5)

A Warning on a Normal asset (alarm notification: 1 x 1 = 1) is not displayed on the parent asset or on any other asset that is higher in the hierarchy.

However, for a Warning on a Critical asset (alarm notification: 1 x 5 = 5), APM looks at the priority ranking of the parent asset and calculates the alarm notification ranking for that asset. If the parent asset is also a critical asset, APM displays the alarm on the parent asset and then calculates the alarm notification ranking for its parent in the hierarchy. When APM reaches a parent asset with an alarm notification ranking below the minimum ranking, the alarm will not be pushed any higher in the hierarchy.

To prevent alarms from being displayed in the top assets in the physical hierarchy, you can assign asset criticalities with low numeric rankings to those assets.

Email Notification

You can also have the system send an email to one or more employees when an indicator is in an alarm state. You can set this up on the indicator’s alarm states.

Note: For this feature to work, the employee must be a domain user with a valid email account. This email account must be added to the employee record in APM.

Acknowledging Indicator Warnings and Alarms

It is possible to acknowledge indicator warnings and alarms in the following ways:

•	With a work request or SAP notification (new or existing)

•	With a work order or SAP maintenance order (new or existing)

•	Stating that the indicator will be monitored

•	Stating that the problem was fixed during inspection

•	Stating that the reading was incorrect

•	Stating that the alarm settings were incorrect

Note: One or more of these acknowledgment methods might be unavailable if they have been turned off in the site’s indicator settings.

SAP work documents are available instead of APM work documents when CMMS interoperability is enabled for the SAP Plant Maintenance system. The site’s interoperability profile specifies whether APM or CMMS documents are in use.

When you acknowledge the warning or alarm, you are asked to record any notes about the alarm or warning. Your name and the date and time when the acknowledgment took place are also recorded. Once the alarm or warning is acknowledged, APM turns off the alarm notification on the indicator and on the asset (if applicable).

When you acknowledge an alarm with an SAP document, the maintenance order or notification’s description includes the collection note from the primary indicator reading and the acknowledgment notes.

Tip: Once an SAP maintenance order or notification is used to acknowledge an alarm in APM and the document has been created in SAP, you might need to exit APM and start it again to see further changes made in SAP to the document.

When you acknowledge an alarm or warning, you can specify that a follow-up reading is required and a time limit (for example, 10 days). If the indicator’s collection policy allows it, the indicator’s next reading due date is based on the acknowledgment date plus the follow-up time period.

Note: Requesting a follow-up reading on an acknowledgment relies on the use of indicator due date triggering on standard tasks and jobs. If the tasks and jobs are triggered on set frequencies (for example, annually), the task or job will not be triggered. The indicator will become overdue, and it will require manual intervention to trigger the task or job, or to create a work order or checksheet.

If failure tracking is set up in your environment, a failure record can be created automatically when you acknowledge an alarm with a work document, by monitoring, or with the “fixed during inspection” flag. When acknowledging the alarm, you can provide information about the failure, for example, its severity and description.

Escalation and Automatic Acknowledgment of Alarms

Your site can use more than one alarm type with different levels of seriousness, such as warning, alarm, and critical. If this is the case, APM notifies users when an indicator has moved from a less serious alarm state (warning) to a more serious alarm state (alarm or critical).

When you acknowledge an alarm by creating a work document, if another reading is then entered for the indicator that creates an alarm state, the system does the following:

•	APM checks if the work document from the previous alarm is still open.

•	If the work document has been closed, canceled, or rejected (in the case of APM work documents only) the alarm is triggered again.

Note: The site’s interoperability profile must identify SAP completed and canceled system statuses (and, optionally, user statuses) for this functionality to work. See APM Interoperability Guide for SAP Plant Maintenance.

•	If the work document is still open, APM checks if the current alarm is of the same severity as the previous alarm.

•	If the severity on the new alarm is higher, a new alarm is created for the indicator.

•	If the severity on the new alarm is lower or the same as the current alarm, the new alarm is automatically acknowledged (that is, the alarm is not turned on again). Failure records are not created for automatic acknowledgments.

For all other acknowledgment options, the alarm is turned on again when a new reading is entered that creates an alarm state.

For example, the temperature indicator might have a warning flag that a user acknowledged by creating a work document. As long as indicator readings come in that are within the warning range, APM does not ask users to re-acknowledge the warning. However, if the readings cross over into the alarm range, APM uses the alarm notification feature to warn users of the more serious alarm.

Undoing an Alarm Acknowledgment

If necessary, you can undo the acknowledgment of an indicator warning or alarm. This action is only possible if the following statements are true:

•	The status of the indicator’s most recent reading is “acknowledged”

•	If APM work documents are used to acknowledge alarms, the most recent acknowledgment’s work request or work order is still open

If a failure record was created when the alarm was acknowledged, the failure is deleted when the acknowledgment is reversed. You can also cancel a request for a follow-up reading.

Alarms That Were Fixed During Inspection

Sometimes a problem identified by an indicator reading is fixed during the inspection when the reading is collected. In this case, the reading does not raise an alarm in the system because no further action is required. For example, a checksheet includes an indicator for the condition of a fan belt on a motor. A tradesman reports that the belt is loose or worn. A loose or worn fan belt normally raises an alarm. However, the tradesman fixed the problem on the spot by making a few adjustments. He indicates this on the checksheet so that no alarm is raised and to signal that no subsequent action needs to be taken.

When you enter an anomalous reading for an indicator on a checksheet, APM informs you that the value you entered will cause an alarm to be raised and notifies you of the type of alarm that will be issued. However, the alarm does not actually get raised until the reading is processed. When you mark a reading as having been fixed during inspection, the alarm is turned off so that, when the reading is processed, no alarm is raised (that is, no icons flash on the Inspection Management view). The alarm reading is automatically acknowledged and no further action is required.

If you have failure tracking set up, APM automatically creates a failure record when an indicator reading is marked as fixed during inspection. The failure’s status is set to Resolved and its properties, such as description, severity, P-F interval, and failure mode or problem, are provided by the failure settings of the indicator’s alarm state.