PAS Musings

Book Triple-Play!

First there was The Alarm Management Handbook released by PAS in May 2006.

Co-authored by Eddie Habibi and Bill Hollifield, both of PAS.

Many sell-outs, multiple printings.

A big hit with customers – even a year later, we are still receiving bulk orders. 

Priced at $89.95.

 

Then there was Alarm Management: Seven Effective Methods for Optimum Performance as released by the ISA in March 2007.

Co-authored by Eddie Habibi and Bill Hollifield, both of PAS.

Priced at $89.00.

Also a big seller.

 

And last week, on April 21, the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has published the "Alarm Management and Annunciator Guidelines"

This time the book is coauthored by PAS and EPRI – with strong contributions by our now-famous authors.

This book also promises to be a best-seller – especially since alarm management is THE HOT TOPIC – in the U.S. power industry anyway.

EPRI doesn’t publish their member prices, but this Guideline has so much valuable content in it, and is so apropos to today’s need that the list non-member price is set accordingly.

You can visit www.erpi.com to find out the non-member price (search for "alarm management guideline" and follow the links provided).

Once find the price, though, you might want to consider joining EPRI for the “insider discount”....

Or you can think about how otherwise to spend funds that would otherwise buy…

 

Obviously, the SEVEN STEPS of ALARM MANAGEMENT as defined by PAS are pretty important!

Still haven’t read the book?

Order one today!

© Text copyright PAS 2008.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

Read all about it!

We’ve known for a while that our Alarm Management was hot.

Thousands of books sold, millions of alarm points analyzed & rationalized, etc, etc.

But now ARC elevates the conversation about just how hot our Alarm Management is with their analysis of the topic.

Check out these quotes from a recent ARC briefing on why YOU need to look into PAS Alarm Management at your plant:

Alarm management has the potential to transform the role of the operators. 

A good alarm management program can free the operator … and allow them to focus … on making intelligent decisions that improve productivity and plant performance.

In our view, the passion … comes through in the book, “The Alarm Management Handbook – A Comprehensive Guide” written by Bill Hollifield and Eddie Habibi. It is an excellent guide to effective alarm management.

They [PAS] put their knowledge and intellectual property in the book for everyone to use and benefit from. 

If you haven’t yet read THE BOOK, Buy It Now or get the ISA Version.

Click here to read the full ARC report.

© Copyright PAS 2008.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

Alarm Management MythBusters Part 2

This is the second of two myths…

Myth #2:  The Best Practice is a Reduced Alarm Count

This myth is an extension of the first – which was more or less “count your alarms and all will be ok”.

This myth says if we can get the alarm count down, then we’re doing the right thing – and by extension – the more the count goes down, the better it is.

Most of you will of course recognize the fallacy in that.

To keep it simple, I go back to my example of the overweight person… 

Just taking off as many pounds as possible is not the best practice.

The same is true for alarms – just reducing the count to some minimum is not a best practice.

Losing one’s excess weight and cutting out excess alarms in the plant are good strategies, but not enough for optimal health and safety.

There’s more to the story…

For optimal body weight, we consider height, physique, body type, and a host of other factors.

For an optimal alarm system, we need to consider process interactions, time to respond, consequences, severity, etc, etc.

And out of that analysis of out alarm system – which is a lot more than just counting alarms – comes an optimal alarm management strategy.

At PAS, we call such analysis work “Documentation & Rationalization” – an interactive work process with process operations personnel to determine the right alarm settings – priorities, trip points and the use of advanced strategies to best handle various plant states, alarm floods, etc – to come up with the optimal alarm strategy.

Broadly speaking, that strategy does reduce alarm count.

But as is the case for your health – a single number such as body weight – is not enough to live well.

And in the plant, it’s also not enough to live safely.

Don’t be fooled – alarm management is more than counting alarms and also more than reducing alarm count.

Want to learn more?

Read the Book!

© Copyright PAS 2007.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

Alarm Management... just like Baseball

Craig Biggio, Houston Astros baseball player, recently achieved his 3000 hit.  His hustle and determination to win is obvious when you watch him play.  But those traits  are not what led to his milestone… 

Exercise, training, diet, and focus over many years put Biggio in a position to reach his goal.

And that required commitment to his goal and years of perseverance to the regimen needed to achieve that goal.

The same is true for the health and safety goals at a operating plant. 

A commitment to these goals requires perseverance in the areas of operator effectiveness, equipment health, work processes, and more.

An effective alarm management is one important part of that regimen.

But like Craig’s dedication to training and diet, effective alarm management is a process, not an event. 

In fact, alarm management is one of the most important components to help the improve operator effectiveness, and helps prevent the tragic loss of life such as we have seen in the industry – even in recent years.

So is alarm management software like baseball? 

Not exactly.  But for every lesson in life, there is an analogy in baseball. 

And in this case, commitment and perseverance that make a difference.

Just as Craig would not have achieved his record without focus on all the key aspects of his training regimen, no plant will achieve their best health and safety goals without some focus on alarm management.

And like baseball, its all about the statistics – beginning with the number of alarms per hour per operator.

What are the statistics for your plant? 

You can’t afford not to know.

Especially when finding out can take less than 2 hours of your time.

Want to know more?  Contact us and we’ll run the numbers for you.

Commitment, dedication and statistics.

Just like baseball.

© Copyright PAS 2007.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

Dirk Willard Knew!!

The Alarm Management Handbook is now in its SIXTH printing.

This says two things.

1)     The book is good. 

      REAL GOOD.

2)     The sales we forecast for the book are low. 

      WAY TOO LOW.

In addition, the book’s ISA twin, “Alarm Management: Seven Effective Methods for Optimum Performance” is also selling well – a pleasure to both the ISA and PAS.

But this posting is not about the book – there’s plenty of others about that – click here or here or here.

This posting is about a real-life action figure hero.

This posting is about Dirk Willard.

Dirk is a practicing chemical engineer (hurray! – the world needs more of these – but more on that at another time) and is also a freelance editor for Chemical Processing magazine, writing Field Notes and developing engineering puzzles for the Puzzler column.

In short, Dirk is an engineer’s engineer with 25 years of experience in the business.

As a technical expert who can write, Dirk is also a frequent reviewer on the book scene, having reviewed about ONE HUNDRED books on Amazon.com alone.

Dirk gave our book FIVE STARS. His opening paragraph says it all…

If this book is not on your shelf and you've been told to cut down on the nuisance alarms or else --- start looking for a new job!

I guess our sales forecasts for the book would have been a whole lot better if we had taken his review more seriously....

Haven't seen or read his review?  Click here to read it. 

Thank you Dirk!

Don't have a copy of the book yet?  Click here to get one now.

You’ll be glad you did.

© Copyright PAS 2007.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

EEMUA Raises the Bar!

For many years now, the EEMUA organization has spearheaded the development and dissemination of alarm management guidelines.

Following the publication of EEMUA Guide #191 on Alarm Systems in 1999, the world’s process plants have benefited from a defined set of standards against which to measure the performance of the alarm systems. 

Now, the EEMUA, has revised their seminal publication and is launching it at a coming-out party on June 21^st in the UK.PAS applauds the work of EEMUA and looks forward to a continued strong impact of their work on industry standards and plant safety.

Past contributions of the EEMUA to the industry have been significant, and we join with EEMUA in the celebration of the launch of their revised publication. If version 191.07 follows in the vein of the original document, then every plant should have a copy.

On the flip side, the hard work by the EEMUA contributors now motivate us to revise and update our own Alarm Management Handbook, as a practical “how-to” guide to help plant personnel implement and achieve the standards set by EEMUA.

Well done, EEMUA, and congratulations!

Now, I guess it’s our turn to sharpen the pencils again!

© Copyright PAS 2007.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

Book-Powered Growth Over 100%!

Zowee!!!  This book thing is great!!!

We set off this year to achieve +52% growth across the board at PAS, and now the results are starting to come in…

In the area of Alarm Management, as in the others, we worked towards our goal of 52%, but through the course of the year, we noticed something good – sales were suddenly picking up and growing faster than expected.

At the time, we all did what you might expect – salespeople were smugly patting themselves on the back for winning the “big ones” and management in turn raising the bar for higher goals by year-end.

That’s how it works, right?

Well, the year went even better than anyone expected…

Sure, we had lots of great things going on in the middle of the year – a stronger sales force, a new sales executive, good software, excellent engineers, superb customers… and a book fresh off the presses.

While all of these factors helped us achieve success in 2006, it is the book which really epitomizes the essence of our success – capturing decades of experience, numerous first-mover advantages and the experience with hundreds of customers world-wide.

The book sold out a 1st printing in 2 months.

Then it sold out a 2nd printing 3 months later.

And the third printing should be sold out by the 1 year anniversary date.

Good stuff, this book.  Better stuff, this company.

For by the end of 2006, we not only exceeded our growth plan of +52% for this  business, but achieved a whopping 124% year-on-year growth rate for our Alarm Management business.

124% is a beautiful number.

It’s bigger than we’ve ever done in this area.

Bigger than anything achieved by any other provider.

And much bigger than the rate at which this market is growing.

Best of all, the acceleration in our growth curve is mainly in the second half of the year, so the stage is set of good things in 2007.

Now watch this space to see what happens next!!!

Let the good times roll!!!

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

The Book is HOT!!

The Alarm Management Handbook is hot!! 

 

Hardly a week goes by when some company somewhere doesn’t order multiple copies for its staff.  Oil companies.  Chemical companies.  And most recently a cement company.

We shipped about 100 books in the last two weeks alone – and this even excludes those distributed to our public and private workshop attendees.

And the feedback is consistent from all readers, across all industries – the book adds significant value and hits the mark in terms of helping educate customers.  Click here and then scroll down to read for yourself

Even better, the book is helping drive increased sales – allowing us to increase our sales and revenue plans for this segment of our business for 2006.

Now that is satisfying!

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

Workshop Frenzy!

Even better than Webinar Mania is Workshop Frenzy….

We ran our first-ever workshop for Alarm Management (in recent history anyway) and the results left me wondering why we didn’t kick this off earlier!!!

Our recent Houston workshop session was a hit – and mainly with companies not yet customers of PAS (to the delight of our sales team).

The Book is obviously making a difference.

Apparently, an erstwhile competitor of PAS heard of our seminar offering and decided to copycat it to the same audience in the same city and with the supposed same content.

Well, good luck to them!

As one of the workshop attendees said, “I attended [the other guy’s] workshop last year and it was all about making the software sale.  The PAS seminar is much more in line with what I expect – actually teaching me about the fundamentals of Alarm Management and not just how to use some commercial software package.”

This customer has it right – a workshop should teach people something they can use to decide on the right approach for projects and software moving forward. 

For those of you that have copies of the Alarm Management Handbook already know, we’re all about teaching the principles and the ability to decide how to best move forward for your plant – not just a commercial software package!

Have a great day – and if you need a real education in Alarm Management, do come and attend one of our Alarm Management workshops offered across the USA in the next 6 months!

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!

The Beat Goes On…

The topic of alarm management and its impact on process plant safety and reliability continues to be a top priority for industry.

For example, check out the line-up of industry experts and the level of focus on alarm management at the upcoming Process Upset Management Workshop organized by Mary Kay O’Conner Process Safety Center in

Houston

this week. 

Tour delight, among the expert-level presenters and panel members is none other than our own

Eddie Habibi

, world-famous author and founder of PAS.

Eddie is presenting “The Seven Steps in Creating a Highly Effective Alarm Management System” – covering industry best practices as developed by PAS over  the past decade from over 100-person-years of practical experience and a rigorous Six Sigma DMAIC work process. 

< More details on all that in The Book, by the way…>

Other experts supporting the workshop are representatives from the Chemical Safety Board and OSHA as well as long-time PAS customers Celanese and DOW Chemical Company.  Eddie will certainly be in good company!

Just when I though I had dispensed with the topic of Alarm Management, it keeps coming up in my daily work, and that of many others… must be important.

By the way, on the Man vs. Dog marketing contest, initial email results are in… the Dog beat out the Man by encouraging 33% more people to open their email.  Need to still wait and see on whether dog-respondents sign up for the Workshop more than the man-responders…

More on that in early August.

© Copyright PAS 2006.  No part of this blog is to be copied in full or in part without the express written permission of PAS; but references and web links are more than OK!