Conducting a Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) can be quite laborious. In a HAZOP, you will systematically evaluate the applicable deviations for each node, within each unit, within each plant. The exSILentia® v4 PHAx™ module is setup to use…
exida explains Blog
- by Todd Stauffer
- Tuesday, February 17, 2015
- Alarm Management
Help Your Operators Defeat the Situation Awareness Demons!
Contrary to what you might have guessed, the “Defeat of the Situation Awareness Demons” is not a new video game on XBOX or Playstation. It is a set of eight (8) factors which undermine effective Situation Awareness. It can be applied to operators in process plants to characterize human…
- 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…
- by Dr. William Goble, CFSE
- Tuesday, January 27, 2015
- Functional Safety
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…
- by Dr. William Goble, CFSE
- Wednesday, January 21, 2015
- Functional Safety
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…
- 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. …
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, November 06, 2014
- Alarm Management
Alarm Management Goes Global with the Release of IEC 62682!
The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has just published the first edition of IEC 62682 “Management of alarm systems for the process industries,” a global standard on alarm management. This new global standard was developed based on the ANSI/ISA-18.2 standard of the same name, which was published in…
- 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…
- 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…
- 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…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Monday, August 25, 2014
- Alarm Management
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…
- 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…
- by Dr. Steve Gandy, CFSP
- Tuesday, July 29, 2014
- Certification
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…
- by Iwan van Beurden, CFSE
- Monday, July 14, 2014
- Certification
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…
- by Dr. Steve Gandy, CFSP
- Wednesday, July 02, 2014
- Certification
How Good Is Your Functional Safety Management?
Those operating in the process world should be familiar with the concept of Functional Safety Management (FSM) and the need to have well defined processes and procedures in place. Otherwise, how else will they be able to ensure that their Safety Instrumented System (SIS) and plant…