It finally happened. Alarm management problems at the plant led to an incident and now management wants action. You have “volunteered” to put together a staffing plan to execute alarm rationalization. You have heard it can be a resource-intensive process, so you want…
Many of you who follow exida’s blogs and webinars will know that we often talk about the requirement for competency. In fact, the 2016 edition of IEC61511 specifically addresses competency in more detail now than the 2003 version. The strong emphasis on competency is because the IEC61511 committee recognized that…
At exida we have studied hundreds of sets of field failure data from various sources. Some of these data sets have indicated differences in failure rates by two orders of magnitude for the same product type! After tracing through the data collection process for many of these field failure data sets,…
The thought of tackling a threat model (TM) might not be the most appetizing to some people. Doing a quick Internet search, someone could get stuck under a mountain of acronyms and terms. I mean, what is a CVSS anyway? And then there are the diagrams, attack trees and feedback loops that…
Machinery related hazards continue to result in hundreds of deaths and thousands of serious injuries each year. In 2019, 2,963 deaths occurred in the construction, transportation and warehousing, agriculture, forestry, fishing and hunting, and manufacturing industries in the United States1. Additionally, serious injuries continue to pose a major challenge…
Similar to the thought experiment “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”, we ask - If an alarm is generated, and the operator fails to acknowledge it, was it really an alarm? A prevalence of unacknowledged…
Part of the changes to the IEC61511 standard in 2016, some five (5) years ago now, was to emphasize the need to do a better job with regards to the Operations and Maintenance phase of the safety lifecycle. One of the key aspects of the Operation and Maintenance phase…
Study after study finds that something like 80% of industrial incidents (give or take) are caused by Human Error. Incidents involving human error often include a failure of the operator to respond to an alarm, which is often directly or indirectly caused by nuisance alarms. Poor alarm management has…
During a recent exida webinar we received the following question:
We tend to see more failures with actuated valves, than what manufacturers published failure rates would indicate! Any reason?
There are several reasons. Some manufacturers publish data based on field return data where they classify failures caused by customers…
With the drive for digitalization and the Internet of Things the expression “Content is King”, coined by Bill Gates, has now been replaced by “Data is King”. This is especially TRUE in functional safety where the safety and reliability predictions generated from a Failure Modes, Effects & Diagnostics Analysis…
Two common gaps exida encounters when evaluating vendor compliance against the IEC 62443-4-1, IEC 62443-4-2 and IEC 62443-3-3 standards are:
Improving compliance in these areas is also a very cost-effective…
This is the next in a series of blogs and papers on the benefits of cyber certification. You can read part 1 here , part 2 here, and part 3 here . Certification provides you with the opportunity to work with an experienced cyber team here at exida, and…
In the book “The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right”, Atul Gawande, surgeon and best-selling author, tackles the problem of how to prevent human error in an age where 
professionals grapple with the increasing complexity of their responsibilities. Errors,…
Want to improve your safety lifecycle and be more compliant with IEC 61508? Focus on the things that have the most benefit. Like what? What are some of these valuable things?
One of the major deficiencies I see while doing certification assessments is…
This is the next in a series of blogs and papers on the benefits of cyber certification. You can read part 1 here and part 2 here. Certification provides you with the opportunity to work with an experienced cyber team here at exida, and the vast knowledge of cyber…