Are the inputs coming from mechanical devices? Like valves or something? Maybe it's to allow for the mechanical motion to finish. 0.2 seconds would be way too long for coordinating electrical signals or a debounce. I consider a typical debounce setting to be somewhere around 4ms, at least in terms of whats acceptable for protections.
If it's in an area of very high electrical noise, and perhaps the grounding wihtin the plant isn't as good as it could be this could be a left over artifact from an older version of eletromechanical logic that made its way into the new electronic logic. Debounce (fancy way of saying delay) is often used to keep transient interference from causing a false pickup. Again, 0.2 seconds is VERY long for this, so I would guess its due to something mechanical.
Also, debounce is often used to deal with 'gremlins' or weird issues that folks don't have the patience to figure out. Transient problems on secondary systems can almost ALWAYS be solved by using proper grounding techniques.