Editing Alarm management (section)

==The need for alarm management==
Alarm management is usually necessary in a [[wikt:process|process]] [[manufacturing]] environment that is controlled by an operator using a supervisory control system, such as a [[distributed control system|DCS]], a [[supervisory control and data acquisition|SCADA]] or a [[programmable logic controller|programmable logic controller (PLC)]].  Such a system may have hundreds of individual alarms that up until very recently have probably been designed with only limited consideration of other alarms in the system.  Since humans can only do one thing at a time and can pay [[attention]] to a limited number of things at  a time, there needs to be a way to ensure that alarms are presented at a rate that can be assimilated by a human operator, particularly when the plant is upset or in an unusual condition.  Alarms also need to be capable of directing the operator's attention to the most important problem that he or she needs to act upon, using a priority to indicate [[degree of importance]] or rank, for instance. To ensure a continuous production, a seamless service, a perfect quality at any time of day or night, there must be an organisation which implies several teams of people handling, one after the other, the occurring events.

This is more commonly called the on-call management. The on-call management relies on a team of one or more persons (site manager, maintenance staff) or on external organisation (guards, telesurveillance centre). To avoid having a full-time person to monitor a single process or a level, information and / or events transmission is mandatory. This information transmission will enable the on-call staff to be more mobile, more efficient and will allow it to perform other tasks at the same time.