Fifty respondents across manufacturing and water operations reported that the paging networks used to notify operators of critical alarms are at end of life with no direct replacement
-- Plant paging networks are reaching end of life with no like-for-like replacement, forcing manufacturers into unplanned modernisation decisions. SeQent is highlighting the field research finding today. Fifty respondents across automotive, water and wastewater, pharmaceutical and semiconductor operations reported that the paging networks they rely on to reach operators and maintenance staff are decades old and have no direct replacement on the market.
SeQent detailed the finding in its 2026 State of Industrial Alarming report, published August 25, 2026. The research spanned nine months and gathered input from 213 participants, including customers, prospects and partners. SeQent's software sits between the alarm system and the people who respond, delivering alarms to two-way radios, smartphones, displays and PA systems so plants are not dependent on any single notification channel.
When a critical alarm fires on a plant floor, the alarm system determines that something is wrong, while a separate notification layer determines who finds out. Standards such as ISA 18.2 measure whether an alarm system is well tuned. None measure whether the alarm reached a person who could act on it, how long that took, or whether it can be proven in an audit. In many plants, that notification layer is still a paging network installed in the 1990s or 2000s. Operators, maintenance technicians and safety personnel depend on that network to learn when a critical alarm requires action.
The report places the hardware finding in a wider context. No published industry benchmark exists for whether a critical alarm reached a person who could act on it. Research by the Manufacturing Institute cited in the report estimates 1.9 million manufacturing jobs could go unfilled by 2033, leaving fewer operators to manage more alarms.
The finding is relevant to plant managers, operations and maintenance leaders, controls engineers and environmental, health and safety teams in continuous or high-volume manufacturing.
"The impact of alarm overload has been documented across industry research for years," said Sheret Ross, Co-CEO of SeQent. "What nobody had done was pull that data together and ask the obvious question: after the alarm fires, does the right person actually find out? We published this report to give operations leaders one honest picture of where the industry stands and a practical way to figure out where they stand within it."
The report proposes four response metrics: notification response time, escalation completion, multi-device delivery and alarm accountability. A five-stage alarm management maturity model maps the progression from reactive phone trees to unified alarm intelligence. Plants can use SeQent's Alarm Health Assessment to benchmark their own operation against the report's response framework. The assessment takes three minutes.
The report recommends that plants baseline how long a critical alarm takes to reach a person, identify the small number of bad-actor alarms driving most notification volume, and automate escalation for the most critical alarms. SeQent's alarm management routes unacknowledged alarms to backup personnel through predefined escalation hierarchies, and its Andon visual display shows live alarm and production status on the plant floor.
About SeQent
SeQent provides industrial alarm notification and plant-floor communication software. It has more than three decades of experience in alarm notification, and its software operates at more than 500 sites globally. SeQent unifies alarm and event data from SCADA, MES and PLC systems and delivers it to two-way radios, smartphones, displays, pagers and PA systems. Its software connects existing alarm systems with the people responsible for responding and records alarm delivery and acknowledgment.
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Organization: SeQent
Website: https://seqent.com
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