Alarm Root Cause Detection System

Production process control becomes complicated as the complexity of the controlled process grows. To simplify the operator’s role many computer based control systems with integrated visualization clients have been developed. In many practical circumstances malfunction of one or more process components results in other related components entering the alarm states. Several alarms appear on the operator’s display in a short time making it difficult for the operator to diagnose the root cause quickly. Within this paper we describe a solution of this problem based on a multi-agent system that processes all incoming alarms, identifies the root cause alarms vs. alarms arising in consequence of the roots and presents the diagnostic results to the operator visually.