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exida explains Blog

  • by Ted Stewart, CFSP, exidaCSP
  • Friday, January 30, 2015
  • Certification

CFSE/CFSP: Why and How to Become One

 

As an engineer responsible for critical industrial processes, we face a variety of challenges:

  • coping with new and changing standards
  • increased pressures for process uptime and plant safety
  • a growing list of responsibilities
  • decreased availability of support personnel

This makes…

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The exida FMEDA Process - Accurate Failure Data for the Process Industries

In this blog, I will talk about the FMEDA method and how it can generate realistically accurate failure rate data.

The first question we have to ask is “why do you need failure rate data ?”

One of the fundamental concepts in today’s functional safety standard, IEC 61508 and…

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Field Data Validation with Predictive Analytics

Who cares about field failure data? Why are we even here?

IEC 61511 – Fundamental Concepts

The fundamental concepts from our functional safety standards are the probabilistic performance based design.  Many of you know that this was terribly controversial when this was first proposed. Even to this day, there…

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Seat-of-your-pants Software?
  • by John Yozallinas, CFSE
  • Wednesday, December 03, 2014
  • Software

Seat-of-your-pants Software?

I’ve had software development folks tell me that the “just do it” approach is a valid lifecycle model for SW development.  In their context, this means writing the code based on limited marketing and design information and then backfilling the requirements and design specifications to describe what was done. …

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Alarm Management Goes Global with the Release of IEC 62682!

Alarm Management Goes Global with the Release of IEC 62682!

  • by John Yozallinas, CFSE
  • Thursday, October 30, 2014
  • Certification

Coming Apart at the Seams

Does your safety development process have a split personality?  Do you “talk-the-talk but not walk-the-walk?”  When crunch time comes for project completion, does the mantra “whatever it takes” matter more than following the process?  Does your process peel away at the seams?

Getting buy-in to a rigorous process for…

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How to Calculate Proof Test Coverage
  • by Dr. William Goble, CFSE
  • Thursday, October 16, 2014
  • Certification

How to Calculate Proof Test Coverage

Most engineers who design and verify safety instrumented functions (SIFs) understand how hard it is to design a manual proof test with high effectiveness (also called high proof test coverage). Those folks who understand that a proof test is not likely to detect all failures never use simplified equations…

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Arrr You Safe?
  • by John Yozallinas, CFSE
  • Thursday, September 18, 2014
  • Certification

Arrr You Safe?

In honor of the upcoming “Talk Like a Pirate” Day on September 19, I offer this lighthearted look at PIU assessment.

Captain (C)

“Ahoy me bucko!  We be attemptin’ to get our transmitter design certified.  It’s been shippin’ fer a few years now.  We don’t got a…

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Should DCS Alarms be shown on P&IDs?

Should DCS Alarms be shown on P&IDs?

Alarms were originally shown on Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams / Drawings (P&IDs) to document hardware requirements for installation in a (panelboard) control room. This was important because there was limited real estate in the control room for the alarms (displayed on Panalarms and light boxes) and there was a…

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If There Was ONE THING You Need to Know About Using PIU
  • by John Yozallinas, CFSE
  • Tuesday, August 05, 2014
  • Certification

If There Was ONE THING You Need to Know About Using PIU

Have a formal process for tracking, recording, and classifying field shipments and failure returns.

If your product was designed well in the first place, even if strict adherence to IEC 61508 was not followed, your field failure rate should be pretty low.

Using Proven-In-Use (PIU) methodology will…

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How Does Culture Affect Safety?

How Does Culture Affect Safety?

I was reading an incident report on the Chemical Safety Board (CSB) website the other day, where it was the conclusion of the reviewing team that the incident (which sadly resulted in a loss of life) was the direct result of a poor safety culture across the…

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The exida Certificate Explained

The exida Certificate Explained

A manufacturer whose product passes the exida IEC 61508 Assessment Scheme will receive a certificate based on IEC 61508 and perhaps other functional safety standards. There is a significant amount of information on a certificate that may not be always trivial for a novice. This document explains how one…

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How Good Is Your Functional Safety Management?

How Good Is Your Functional Safety Management?

Functional Safety And Electromagnetic Interference: What’s the Connection?

Functional Safety And Electromagnetic Interference: What’s the Connection?

Functional Safety and Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) may not often be used in the same sentence. But EMI is just one of the environmental stresses that can stop a system from performing its safety function. It is important for a functional safety system to be immune from the EMI levels…

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Stress vs. Strength… In My Process?

Stress vs. Strength… In My Process?

I consistently find that with companies who are new to functional safety development, the SW process is not as structured or mature as the HW process.  SW development is often more informal, and subject to the interpretation of one or more SW developers.  But when project delays occur, it’s…

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