What’s on your Christmas list? Instead of relying on Santa, here are some gifts you can expect from a SIL 3 compliant process:
- 12 safety requirements improved through review by test engineers
- 11 validation tests that uncovered problems before they reached the field
- 10…
- by John Yozallinas, CFSE
- Thursday, December 12, 2013
- Certification
Developing a Functional Safety Product: What You Need to Know
Thinking about developing a safety product? Use these 3 steps as a starting point:
1. Know thyself
Do you have documented development processes that govern how you develop a product from start to finish? If not, start by writing down what is actually being done. Interview the people…
- by Ted Stewart, CFSP, exidaCSP
- Tuesday, December 03, 2013
- Certification
CFSE Endorsement: Preparation and Achievement
Click here to read Part 1 of this blog series
Click here to read Part 2 of this blog series
Passing an endorsement examination demonstrates proven capabilities and subject matter expertise beyond that which is required for the Certified Functional Safety Expert (CFSE) or Certified Functional Safety…
- by Ted Stewart, CFSP, exidaCSP
- Tuesday, November 19, 2013
- Certification
CFSE Endorsement Program: I Know What It Is, but Why Do I Need It?
Click here to read Part 1 of this blog series
Participation in the endorsement program can provide many benefits to you and/or your company:
- Professional growth and development
- Acquire / Demonstrate expertise in specific areas of functional safety
- Strengthen you resume
- Make yourself a more valuable safety engineer …
- by Ted Stewart, CFSP, exidaCSP
- Tuesday, November 12, 2013
- Certification
You Have Been Endorsed
When current Certified Functional Safety Professionals and Experts (CFSP/CFSEs) come to us seeking further education, we commonly point them to the recently established CFSE Endorsement Program. However, we are often posed questions in return:
- What’s an Endorsement program?
- Is there a test involved?
- If…
- by Dr. William Goble, CFSE
- Thursday, November 07, 2013
- Certification
Why Innovation in Safety?
In a marketplace where many of buyers of firmly committed to “proven in use,” many projects are still using 30 year-old logic solver designs. Proven in use is a valuable concept especially for field equipment where it is hard to evaluate how well a product design will…
- by Dr. Steve Gandy, CFSP
- Tuesday, October 29, 2013
- Certification
Obtaining My CFSE/CFSP Certification: Why Bother?
It’s an interesting question and one I asked myself. For any engineer and/or professional working in the controls business or process industries where safety-related equipment is required, it is essential (per IEC61511-1 Clause 5.2.2: Organization and Resources) to prove competency to carry out any safety-lifecycle activities. So what does…
- by Iwan van Beurden, CFSE
- Wednesday, October 23, 2013
- Functional Safety
My Proof Test Coverage is Better Than Yours!
Oh Really?
It must have been the week of the Proof Test Coverage (PTC) questions. In the latest marketing wars between vendors, the Proof Test Coverage has been used as a weapon. Who would have ever thought about using Proof Test Coverage to show that product A…
- by Iwan van Beurden, CFSE
- Wednesday, October 16, 2013
- Functional Safety
Why Does My Proof Test Coverage Change with Partial Stroke Testing?
I have run into this question a couple of times now and though the answer is somewhat straightforward, some customers have trouble wrapping their head around this without a clear example. So here we go…
First of all we need to keep in mind that the objective of a…
- by John Yozallinas, CFSE
- Friday, September 20, 2013
- Certification
Under Pressure
Pressure can be good. It creates diamonds, right? It can help us focus; may move us to learn something new. It can help reduce procrastination. However pressure can quickly turn into a bad thing if it causes us to skip important process steps or to force a release because…
- by Dr. William Goble, CFSE
- Thursday, September 05, 2013
- Certification
exida Safety Awards
Since the announcement of the 1st Annual exida Safety Awards program a few weeks ago I have received a few questions and a challenge. The questions from manufacturers mainly focused on how to enter their product and what is the…
- by John Yozallinas, CFSE
- Wednesday, September 04, 2013
- Functional Safety
What’s a V-Model?
The V-model is a lifecycle model useful in the product development process that shows the link between the test specifications at each phase of development. Simply put, it looks like this:
The name comes from the basic shape of the model. …
- by Dave Butler, CFSE
- Thursday, August 29, 2013
- Software
Software Modeling and Functional Safety: Part 2
Part 1 of this blog entry discussed software modeling, modeling notation, and modeling tools. But, what does this have to do with Functional Safety? The IEC 61508 standard has requirements, for certain SIL levels, regarding the use of:
- “Semi-formal methods”
- Computer-aided specification and design tools
- Design standards
- Performance modeling …
- by Dave Butler, CFSE
- Tuesday, August 27, 2013
- Software
Software Modeling and Functional Safety: Part 1
Mechanical CAD and electronic schematic capture tools have been around much longer than graphical software tools. This is primarily because physical objects are more naturally represented as components in a computer-aided design program, and it was more obvious how to design those technologies at the time. The “soft” in…
- by Dr. William Goble, CFSE
- Tuesday, August 06, 2013
- Functional Safety
OREDA Data vs. FMEDA Data
A question was posed to me this week about why the OREDA failure rate for a solenoid valve was greater than the Failure Modes, Effects, and Diagnostic Analysis (FMEDA) results from exida for a specific manufacturer’s solenoid valve. The person asking the question was clearly challenging the exida…