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exida : Blog : Tagged Entries

Entries tagged as 'IEC 61508'

Steve Gandy's photo
Steve Gandy
VP of Global Business Development

Practice Makes Perfect…Almost

Thursday, April 25, 2013

How often do Managers see training budgets being cut, or personnel becoming blasé about training in general?  Isn’t it the norm that annual performance reviews involve reviewing training requirements?  Realistically, how often do these training requirements get ignored and/or forgotten about during the year?  The answer, I’m afraid, is all too often.

In the world of functional safety it’s essential that any and all personnel involved in safety have appropriate and adequate training, even if it’s just to keep up with the latest changes to the standards or industry trends.  For end users, the IEC 61511 standard is the key driver for process safety.  We at exida are always trying to promote training as a means of informing and educating…

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Functional Safety Certification • (0) Comments • Permalink

Iwan van Beurden's photo
Iwan van Beurden
Director of Software Engineering

How Do You Certify to IEC 61508?

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

As you may already know, when it comes to the certification of equipment according to IEC 61508, there are several 3rd party agencies from which to choose. It is obvious from reviewing different assessments on for example a solenoid, that the interpretation of IEC 61508 and thereby the assessment method, can be quite different from one agency to the next. Why is it that for a specific solenoid one 3rdparty comes up with a failure rate of 0.47 FIT and another 3rd party comes up with a failure rate of 300+ FIT? It’s the same product!!

A few months ago I was at a manufacturer who had an assessment done by exida, as well as another 3rd party. The failure…

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Functional Safety Certification • (0) Comments • Permalink

wgoble's photo
Dr. William Goble, CFSE
Principal Partner

Setting the Pace

Thursday, May 02, 2013

Going back in time to the turn of the century (remember 2000?), the amount and quality of failure data threatened to doom the whole probabilistic analysis approach.  I recall a letter in IEEE Spectrum magazine from Patrick D. O’Conner, a well known reliability engineering author, who expressed the opinion that IEC 61508 was a unless burden that would force widespread waste of engineering time. 

We at exida recognized that probabilistic analysis had great potential to allow companies to improve safety while actually lowering cost however more realistic models and failure data were needed.  We have studied hundreds of field failure data sets and incident reports for more than a decade.  The first thing to become clear was that…

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John Yozalinas's photo
John Yozalinas
Senior Safety Engineer

Which Edition of IEC 61508 is Relevant to Me?

Tuesday, May 07, 2013

Simply stated, the 2nd edition of IEC 61508 is the relevant standard for newly developed products and new certifications.  This represents the current best practices on functional safety techniques and measures, and is what the marketplace expects for today’s products. 

Renewed certifications can use the 1st edition of IEC 61508 if that was the edition used when originally certified.  Certifications can be renewed using the 1st edition for up to nine years post- release of the 2nd edition.  Since the 2nd edition was released in 2010, exida will allow certification renewal under the 1st edition until 2019.  This takes into account the long lifespan of many certified products being used in the field.  Certificate owners may choose to renew…

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wgoble's photo
Dr. William Goble, CFSE
Principal Partner

Certificate Forgery!

Thursday, May 09, 2013

exida has discovered yet another forged functional safety certificate.  You can read about another occurrence in a previous blog entry.

False Certificate


The company name on the forged certificate is ISP SA DE CV, Cunduacan, Tab., Mex.  How could someone think this would not be checked?  exida maintains a list of valid certifications on the exida Safety Automation Element List.  This counterfeit certificate is not there.  While I suppose it is a compliment to see that the forgers want to use exida certificates as a base to start from, they should realize that exida’s accredited scheme has a means for anyone to quickly verify the validity of any certificate. 

…

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Loren Stewart's photo
Loren Stewart
Safety Engineer

The exida Scheme

Thursday, May 16, 2013

Today I was asked: “What is the exida Scheme?”  If one person had this question, it is likely that others may be interested as well.  Therefore, I decided to take a moment and explain the exida structure.  Any Certification Body operates each product certification per a “scheme,” which references standards, notes or describes procedures, and any additional requirements of the standard. 

We at exida have our own Functional Safety Certification scheme to document our procedures which are audited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).  We also reference the IEC 61508 standard and document any interpretations of the standard.  Lastly, we take any controversial issues/interpretations before the exida Advisory Board to offer their insight on the issue.  The opinions…

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  • Control System Security (10)
  • Failure Data (15)
  • Functional Safety Certification (37)
  • General (6)
  • Layer of Protection Analysis (LOPA) (2)
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Most recent entries

  • How do You Compare?Added 5 hours ago
  • The exida SchemeAdded 6 days ago
  • Root Cause AnalysisAdded 14 May 2013
  • Certificate Forgery!Added 09 May 2013
  • Which Edition of IEC 61508 is Relevant to Me?Added 07 May 2013
  • Setting the PaceAdded 02 May 2013
  • How Do You Certify to IEC 61508?Added 30 April 2013
  • Practice Makes Perfect…AlmostAdded 25 April 2013
  • PHA: A must or a MUST?Added 24 April 2013
  • Setting up for FAILUREAdded 18 April 2013
  • The Human Element of Functional Safety (The Challenge)Added 10 April 2013
  • A 100% Pass Rate!Added 03 April 2013
  • Changing the PVST Interval. Hey, my Architectural Constraints changed!Added 21 March 2013
  • Changing the PVST Interval. Hey, my failure rates changed!Added 20 March 2013
  • That is impossible! It has never happened before…Added 13 March 2013

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