Abstract
SHELL MALAYSIA EXPLORATION AND PRODUCTION (SMEP) Alarm Management journey started back in 2011 as a result of Process Safety Basic Requirement 9 (PSBR9). Alarm management is considered a critical part of Operational Excellence as poor alarm management is recognized as one of the key factors contributing to major process safety incidents that occurred previously in the Esso Longford Gas Plant and BP's Texas City Refinery explosions. In depth understanding of Alarm Management will help improve Process Safety along with increasing the reliability of any plant.
SMEP is considered a pioneer in Malaysia's upstream business when it comes to establishing Alarm Management within Operated Assets. As a result, our in-house expertise was requested by the regulators to assist and share our best practices with other oil and gas majors within Malaysia. A number of challenges were faced as the whole changes in the Operating philosophy along with people's behaviors and mindset. Persistence was also required to encourage the whole organization to further emulate these changes as part of the SMEP CONTINOUS IMPROVEMENT journey.
SMEP has seen tremendous improvements in Alarm Management moving from offline Master Alarm Database (MAD) to Online MAD; Manual Alarm Bad Actor reporting to auto generate Bad Actor and making further use of alarms for troubleshooting and incident investigations. SMEP started with an average facility having more than 100 alarms per hour to 6 alarms per hour, meeting the global standards set and are now looking forward to reducing this to 2.4 alarm per hours, which would be Best in Class within current operations.