Methods and apparatus to manage process plant alarms

A tangible article of manufacture storing machine readable instructions that, when executed, cause a machine to:

• receive a process plant control system configuration parameter, the process plant control system configuration parameter representing a selected state of a process plant;
• perform a first query in an alarm definition data structure based on the process plant control system configuration parameter to obtain an alarm configuration parameter for a process plant alarm module of a process plant controller;
• and
• configure a state of the process plant alarm module based on the obtained alarm configuration parameter.

An apparatus comprising:

• a tangible machine accessible memory;
• an alarm behavior rules data structure stored on the machine accessible memory, the alarm behavior rules data structure defining, for a process plant alarm module of a process plant controller, a plurality of alarm configuration parameters for respective ones of a plurality of process plant control system configuration parameters;
• and
• an alarm manager to receive a variable representative of a selected state of a process plant, to obtain an alarm configuration parameter from the alarm behavior rules data structure based on the received variable, and to configure the process plant alarm module based on the obtained alarm configuration parameter.