The IEC 62443 series of cybersecurity standards include over ten documents covering various subjects. Buying a full set is a bit expensive, but for me the real cost is the time needed to read and understand them. So I often ask one of the experts at exida…
exida explains Blog
- by Dr. William Goble, CFSE
- Thursday, June 21, 2018
- Industrial Cybersecurity
How Does the IEC 62443 Cybersecurity Standard Apply to Integrators?
- by Iwan van Beurden, CFSE
- Thursday, June 14, 2018
- Functional Safety
Fake Fact: Diagnostics are useless
The idea that diagnostics are useless contradicts everything I’ve ever learned and taught about diagnostics.
Diagnostics help identify problems. Diagnostics can turn a fault that is unrevealed during normal operation into a detected fault, which allows me to take action. That action could be an automatic transition to the…
- by Chris O'Brien, CFSE
- Thursday, June 07, 2018
- Functional Safety
Functional Safety Assessment of Valve Assemblies (Part 2)
In Part 1, I covered the emerging trends in the valve assembly market, how these trends relate to IEC 61511 requirements, and the anatomy of final elements.
Now let’s discuss why we need to show requirements traceability down through the design of the safety instrumented function and then…
- by Steve Gandy, CFSP
- Thursday, May 31, 2018
- Functional Safety
Do You Measure the Performance of Your SIS?
It always amazes me that when teaching our FSE 100 Functional Safety Engineering course, the number of times I find that end users in the class are not really measuring the performance of their SIS. In most cases, they are doing some measurements, but not thoroughly.
It…
- by Dr. William Goble, CFSE
- Thursday, May 17, 2018
- Functional Safety
Does Everyone Really Ignore Failure Rates?
While discussing functional safety certification of an integrated valve assembly with a manufacturer, exida stated that all devices (actuator, pneumatic parts, valve, etc.) must be IEC 61508 certified. The manufacturer said this was no problem, and provided a set of exida and TÜV certificates.
Of…
- by Iwan van Beurden, CFSE
- Thursday, May 10, 2018
- Functional Safety
Fake Fact: IEC 61508 Does Not Affect Me As an End User
Though this is largely true, I want to discourage people from completely ignoring the good things that IEC 61508 does for the end user.
IEC 61511 is the process industry functional safety standard derived from IEC 61508. In the very first section of IEC 61511 (“Scope”), the standard describes…
- by Jonathan Moore
- Wednesday, May 02, 2018
- Functional Safety
MISRA Compliance Static Analysis Results for a Real-world Automotive Project
Splint is offering to present a “special reward” to the “first person to produce a real program that produces no errors with strict checking.” Here’s a summary of a recent real-world automotive project attempting this.
TL;DR: We were not successful, but we learned a few things about MISRA compliance. Feel free to skip to the Observations section to learn more.
…
- by Steve Gandy, CFSP
- Thursday, April 26, 2018
- Functional Safety
Which FSAs Do I Have to Perform?
The new release of IEC61511:2016 has caused some confusion when it comes to the Functional Safety Assessments (FSAs). Which ones are mandatory?
The confusion comes from the wording in the standard and the clarifications in the notes. The relevant clause in the standard 5.2.6.1.4 states:
A FSA team…
- by John Yozallinas, CFSE
- Thursday, April 12, 2018
- Functional Safety
Dreaming of a Better Tomorrow?
When I was a kid, I liked watching the Jetsons. I felt certain that by the year 2000 we’d all be enjoying those flying saucers and futuristic homes. Imagine my disappointment that in 2018 we still drive on 4 wheels… and my home cannot elevate itself above bad weather……
- by Chris O'Brien, CFSE
- Thursday, March 29, 2018
- Certification
Functional Safety Assessment of Valve Assemblies (Part 1)
In this blog series, I will cover the emerging trends in the valve assembly market, how these trends relate to the IEC 61511 requirements, and what's in a final element. When you look at the different devices that go into some of these safety systems, the final element becomes…
- by Iwan van Beurden, CFSE
- Thursday, March 15, 2018
- Functional Safety
Fake Fact: Final Elements should not be included in SIF evaluation
Ehh… If your safety action is stopping flow/closing a valve, how are you going to accomplish this if you consider that the remote actuated valve is not part of your SIF ?
So, what is this myth based on? The title of IEC 61508 reads “Functional safety of electrical/electronic/programmable…
- by John Yozallinas, CFSE
- Friday, March 09, 2018
- Functional Safety
You want what?? You want it when??
Estimating time and cost for a project, or even part of a project, can be tricky. Breaking down the tasks into subparts must be done or you don’t stand a chance. Given enough time, you can develop an accurate estimate and put a good plan in place. But sometimes…
- by Jonathan Moore
- Thursday, March 01, 2018
- Functional Safety
Software Metrics
Both IEC 61508 and ISO 26262 highly recommend a modular approach to software development. One question that comes up regularly asks if there are quantitative targets for determining whether sufficient progress has been achieved by software engineers.
