Six Sigma Improves Alarm Management at Monsanto’s Soda Springs, Id., Phosphorus Plant
Posted by: meikah | 19 February 2008 | 11:47 pm
Monsanto Soda Springs‘s plant in Soda Springs, Idaho, produces elemental phosphorus, or P4, most of which is sent to other Monsanto facilities to make PCL3, the primary ingredient for Roundup herbicide.
The process of manufacturing elemental phosphorus begins with mining the phosphate ore. Mining involves working with a furnace, the right temperature, thus it requires sophisticated controls. Monsanto was using Fishers’ PRoVOX distributed control system (DCS) in the early 1980s, and then DeltaV control system by 1996.
The control system was kept to a minimum because it was costly then. When digital control systems alarms became easy and cheap, Monsanto found itself overusing the system. It caused as many problems as it solved.
That was when Monsanto began turning to Six Sigma, with emphasis on alarm management. The alarm problems came down to too many alarms and alarming practices can cause incidents.
The company’s Six Sigma team used cause-and-effect fishbone diagram to investigate the possible causes of alarm problems. They applied the Six Sigma DMAIC system to the problem:
- Developed an alarm management philosophy and selected alarm metrics (the Define phase).
- Assessed the present alarm system (Measure/Analyze phases).
- Reduced the number of nuisance alarms (Analyze /Improve phases).
- Rationalized alarms by need and priority (Improve phase).
- Developed an alarm configuration database (Improve – Control phases).
Source:
ControlGlobal.com
