Friday 3rd September 2004

Alarm Rationalisation Seminar Focuses On Concerns Raised By the Health & Safety Executive

We will be holding a free alarm rationalisation seminar Tuesday 16th November 2004 in Aberdeen. This will be aimed at companies who are currently going through the alarm rationalisation process or those considering where to begin.

There will be presentations focusing on the key issues and software demonstrations showing how IMAC can help overcome these ‘challenges’.

ICS have teamed up with 4-Sight Consulting (suppliers of EEMUA approved training courses on alarm management) to run the one day event which will highlight some of the areas companies wishing to rationalize alarms should focus on in order to gain greater plant efficiency.

To register your interest in the seminar, simply send an email to Sean Herring, ICS’s Sales & Marketing Manager at sean.herring@ics-ltd.co.uk

With increasing pressure from the HSE (Health & Safety Executive) for better alarm handling and the publication of the EEMUA 191 ‘Alarm Management Guidelines’ document, this seminar is a ‘must attend’ event.

Thursday 2nd September 2004

Industrial Control Software Ltd has recently announced the appointment of a distributor for Ireland. Whitelite, who are based in Carlow, approximately 80Km from Dublin, have more than 28 years experience in supplying ‘turnkey’ solutions to the power, pharmaceutical, electrical and IT industry sectors.

Brian McGuire, General Manager at Whitelite said, “We have been at the forefront of changes in industrial demand and use only the latest, proven technologies from leading system suppliers to provide total solutions to our customers in a cost effective and efficient manner. We believe our partnership with ICS will enable us to use their IMAC product to provide industry proven, alarm monitoring & analysis software solutions to the many markets that we serve.”

Over the past 15 years ICS’s IMAC product has been continually enhanced and developed to become what is now a ‘de facto’ standard in the alarm handling arena, allowing many of the large blue chip companies to respond to calls from the Health & Safety Authorities for better alarm handling, enabling them to work towards guidelines laid down by EEMUA for alarm management.

The appointment of Whitelite is part ICS’s ongoing strategy to increase their world-wide coverage in key growth areas using local partners to offer global support.

Export Alarm & Event Data To 3rd Party Products In Real-Time

IMAC, the 'de facto' industry standard software product for alarm monitoring & analysis from ICS now includes the ability to export alarm and event data in real-time to 3rd party products such as Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Access.

Sean Herring, ICS's Sales & Marketing Manager said, "the inclusion of ODBC functionality into the standard product demonstrates our ability to react to changing market requirements ensuring IMAC maintains its place as one of the leading software solutions chosen by many large multi-national companies who rely on it to help them improve alarm & event handling and overall plant efficiency."

The advantage of using ODBC to transfer data is that it ensures the integral IMAC database remains secure and tamper proof, whilst allowing users the ability to export data for further processing, archiving or analysis by external ODBC enabled applications.

IMAC has a 15 year industry proven track record. The product range is continually being enhanced and developed to ensure it meets even the most demanding market requirements.

Improve Safety, Optimise Efficiency and Cut Costs through Better Alarm Handling

Since the publication of the EEMUA 191 'Alarm Management Guidelines' and increasing pressure from national government bodies such as the UK's HSE (Health & Safety Executive) for better alarm handling, companies are focusing more on monitoring and analysis of alarms and events. Historically this has been done through the DCS or SCADA system which often have limited capabilities and tie you to the hardware and software from one supplier, dramatically reducing the flexibility and choice you have when deciding how to manage and reduce alarms.

At ICS we recognise this and with more than 15 years experience in alarm management we have ensured that our IMAC range of software products continue to offer a combination of easy to use, yet functionally enhanced, alarm monitoring & analysis tools that can connect to all of the major control system vendors products, offering a truly 'open' solution for alarm handling requirements. 

• Reduction of standing alarms
  
• Definition of rules for alarm prioritisation
  
• Provision of onsite training for operators for alarm management
  
• Development of a more efficient alarm management procedure

As part of ICS' drive to expand into new markets, Sean Herring has recently joined the organization as our new Sales & Marketing Manager. With a career background in the Automation & Process Control sector, Sean will play a key role in increasing ICS' market share and future growth.

When asked about the future growth plans Sean said "Our extensive customer list shows that ICS products have been accepted internationally as an industry standard for cost effective alarm printer replacement and sophisticated alarm management software solutions. We intend to build on this success using our knowledge and expertise to move into new markets providing long term sustainable growth for the company."

At ICS we are constantly looking for new ways to improve the service we offer ensuring our high levels of customer satisfaction are maintained.

Using WebEx technology ICS are now able to rapidly diagnose and resolve support issues through instant sharing/interaction with remote customer's PC, anywhere in the world.

WebEx enables ICS to:
Gain instant, "on-demand" totally secure control of customer's PC via the Web.
Rapidly diagnose and problem solve.
Increase overall levels of customer satisfaction adding value to the products and services we offer.

This industry standard protocol allows data to be retrieved from your control system via OPC.

The alarms and events appear just the same in IMAC without the need for serial data cables or network printing. All that's required is an OPC Alarm and Evert server on your control system.

To date it's the most elegant way of connecting your system to IMAC.

Enhanced Date/Time Extraction

With the new enhanced Date/Time Capture facility, IMAC can now extract any date/time format from the incoming data and use this to set its own internal clock. This allows Searching and Analysis to be perfomed on the date and time from the DCS. One of the major enhancements allows multiple date/time formats within the same window to be converted i.e DD/MM/YYYY and MM/DD/YYYY

On previous versions this was limited to just one format.
Even messages with no date/time information are now automatically synchronised with the DCS.

This new feature is available to customers with a valid support contract. Simply download and apply the new software from our support pages.

This new Ethernet software module allows IMAC to collect alarms/events from any TCP/UDP network device. The messages collected on the TCP/UDP ports are logged by IMAC in the usual way. If your systems can print data to an IP address, IMAC can capture and log the data. The Ethernet module is simply another method of collecting data, along with the current RS-232 Serial and IVP (Network Printer) methods.

The software also has a SYSLOG mode, this enables it to decode and log standard UNIX type SYSLOG messages.

The latest release of IMAC includes our brand new alarm pattern recognition engine.
This allows IMAC to automatically alert your operators when certain sequences of alarms/events are detected.

This new feature is available now for customers with the Xpert System. Simply download and apply the new software from our support pages.

Support Pages

Introduced into the latest Xpert version is the new Parent/Child Alarm Association feature. Select any alarm in the system and the Xpert will search back for up to 50 occurrences of that alarm. It will then look at the alarms/events before and after each occurrence and compile a graph and tabular list showing the percentage of common alarms that occurred before and after the selected message. With this simple to use feature you can see what alarms/events are associated with each other in each alarm sequence.

For example,
You already know that the Gas Turbine has tripped 6 times in the last 2 months. By letting the Xpert perform the Alarm Association function it may tell you that 90% of the time the turbine trips it is immediately proceeded by a Low Gas Inlet Pressure. Information which you may not have instantly known by looking at the alarms manually.

This new feature is available free of charge to customers with a valid support contract. Simply download and apply the new software from our support pages and the function will be instantly available from the Xpert's Frequency Monitor.
 

Support Pages

We have uploaded a demonstration of the Xpert Report Browser to our website. This allows you to browse through sample reports created by the Xpert System.

Reports generated include
Overall Alarm Rate
Number of Standing Alarms
Longest Time to Rectify Alarms
Top 10 Most Frequent Alarms
Top 10 Longest Standing Alarms
Percentage of Priority Alarms in the system

To access this page click here.
 

Support Pages

The latest IMAC Version includes an automated report scheduler for the IMAC Client's Frequency Analysis Alarm Rate function. This allows Alarm Rate reports to be run automatically in the background every day, week or month. The results can be printed, saved or emailed.

Xpert V2.02 allows the automated reports generated by the Server to be emailed, as well as the existing print, save and web upload options introduced in V2.01.

Full feature lists can be viewed from our Downloads page.
Customers with a support contract can download the software NOW from the Support Pages.

Support Pages

Support Pages

Customers with a support contract can download the software NOW from the Support Pages.

Support Pages

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"Thanks once again for your excellent support"
(Oman LNG)

"Just installed IMAC on site, looks good and the operators love it. Good product"
(Oiltanking Singapore)

Support Pages

Support Pages

The Module can also be used to transmit alarms/events between IMAC Servers over the network using the existing Message Transfer functions. For pricing and availability on this Module contact info@ics-ltd.co.uk

The newly added Real Time Query Builder allows you to generate SQL based searches which automatically update in real time. With this you can see all the alarms which occurred over the last, say 24 hours, instantly on the screen without having to click a button.

For more Information see the Features Page

For more Information see the Support Benefits Page