It’s an interesting fact that many end users and engineering companies that I’ve talked to have not or do not undertake Functional Safety Assessments (FSAs). Why is this? My view is that many do not realize and/or understand the true purpose of and benefit of performing FSAs. The IEC61511 standard identifies 5…
exida explains Blog
- by Steve Gandy, CFSP
- Thursday, August 18, 2022
- Functional Safety
Functional Safety Assessments – Why Aren’t They Being Done?
- by Valerie Motto
- Thursday, July 14, 2022
- Functional Safety
Getting Failure Rate Data on a New Component
Realistic component failure rate data is critical to an effective Failure Modes, Effects, and Diagnostic Analysis (FMEDA). This failure rate data can eventually be obtained from component parts manufacturers, research and field failure data analysis. For example, exida’s Component Reliability Database (CRD) has been built from internet research, technical…
- by Jonathan Moore
- Thursday, June 23, 2022
- Functional Safety
What ASIL is a software tool?
TL;DR Tools used in developing safety related automotive systems do not receive an ASIL. Some tools and the way they are used may not be suitable for the development of automotive safety electronics and this depends on the ASIL. When a tool vendor mentions an ASIL they might be…
- by Dr. William Goble, CFSE
- Thursday, April 28, 2022
- Functional Safety
Failure Rate Analysis Paralysis
Reliability Engineering experts know there are many variables that impact operational failure rates. These variables even include how operations and maintenance are done at a specific site. Sometimes it feels like there are so many variables that no realistic failure rate can ever be predicted without a few hundred hours of…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, March 17, 2022
- Alarm Management
Alarm Rationalization by the Numbers
“How much time does alarm rationalization take?”
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 plan to execute alarm rationalization. You need to create a defendable estimate of how long rationalization will…
- by Jim Sweeney
- Thursday, March 10, 2022
- Industrial Cybersecurity
Being Prepared in Cyberspace via Threat Modelling
Preparedness is defined as being in a state of readiness (Webster, 2022). This can take many different forms but when it comes to cybersecurity, a big part is knowing what threats lie in wait within the cyber landscape. It’s difficult to prepare against threats or vulnerabilities you don’t know exist. Being able…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, March 03, 2022
- Alarm Management
Four Ways to Pick a Winning Alarm Rationalization Team
“Who should participate in alarm rationalization?”
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…
- by Steve Gandy, CFSP
- Thursday, February 24, 2022
- Functional Safety
Competency and IEC61511
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…
- by Dr. William Goble, CFSE
- Wednesday, February 16, 2022
- Certification
Most Failures are Systematic - NOT!
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,…
- by Jim Sweeney
- Thursday, January 27, 2022
- Industrial Cybersecurity
Demystifying the Threat Modeling Process
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…
- by Patrick O'Brien
- Wednesday, January 12, 2022
- Functional Safety
Machinery Hazards and Risk Assessment Techniques
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…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, November 11, 2021
- Alarm Management
If an Alarm Occurs and the Operator doesn’t Ack it, was it really an Alarm?
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…
- by Steve Gandy, CFSP
- Thursday, November 04, 2021
- Functional Safety
Measuring Performance – Why Are We Not Doing This?
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…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Tuesday, October 26, 2021
- Alarm Management
Can Nuisance Alarms “Break” the Operator?
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…
- by Dr. William Goble, CFSE
- Thursday, October 21, 2021
- Functional Safety
FAQ: More Failures with Actuated Valves than what published failure rates indicate?
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…