Understanding the Alarm Review Process

When quality control violations occur, it is important to route the information to those responsible for assessing causes and taking corrective actions. The process of dispersing, recalling, and responding to these control violations is called alarm review.

Quality provides these alarm-review mechanisms:

• Operator viewing alarms.

  As operators enter data against a control plan, Quality analyzes sample readings online and immediately displays alarm conditions on the same page. You can log probable causes and corrective actions during the same session.

• Receiving alarm notifications using Workflow.

  Alarms generated by manual data entry and automated data collection through the Quality enterprise integration point (EIP) are directed as they occur to various worklists. The lists are populated and managed by Workflow on a role-user basis. From the worklist, the system provides a detail page that displays relevant process and subgroup information, as well as the working control chart for the data encapsulated by the alarm. You can note probable cause and corrective actions.

• Recalling alarms selectively.

  You can query alarms by process, age, or type using alarm access profiles. The profiles serve as templates, allowing quick recall of alarms, regardless of the data-collection method, meeting extraction criteria that is specific to the job function or area of responsibility. The system recalls alarms and presents them in a summarized page. A detail page is linked to each alarm so that you can view relevant process and subgroup information and the working control chart for the data encapsulated by the alarm. You can note probable cause and corrective actions.