Industry Benchmark Survey on Alarms as Safeguards and Independent Protection Layers (IPLs)
exida recently conducted an industry benchmark survey on the practices for the use of alarms as safeguards and IPLs. With over 200 safety practitioners from around the world providing responses, you can use the survey findings to…
Today I was asked: “What is the exida Scheme?” If one person had this question, it is likely that others may be interested as well. Therefore, I decided to take a moment and explain the exida structure. Any Certification Body operates each product certification per a “scheme,” which references…
Root Cause Analysis - finding out what happens when a failure occurs, and why it happened in the first place. There are many reasons for root cause analysis. The “system” design can be improved to prevent some of the failures from happening again and those who troubleshoot can do…
exida has discovered yet another forged functional safety certificate. You can read about another occurrence in a previous blog entry.
The company name on the forged certificate is ISP SA DE CV, Cunduacan, Tab., Mex. How could someone…
Simply stated, the 2nd edition of IEC 61508 is the relevant standard for newly developed products and new certifications. This represents the current best practices on functional safety techniques and measures, and is what the marketplace expects for today’s products.
Renewed certifications can use the 1st edition of…
Going back in time to the turn of the century (remember 2000?), the amount and quality of failure data threatened to doom the whole probabilistic analysis approach. I recall a letter in IEEE Spectrum magazine from Patrick D. O’Conner, a well known reliability engineering author, who expressed the…
As you may already know, when it comes to the certification of equipment according to IEC 61508, there are several 3rd party agencies from which to choose. It is obvious from reviewing different assessments on for example a solenoid, that the interpretation of IEC 61508 and thereby the assessment…
How often do Managers see training budgets being cut, or personnel becoming blasé about training in general? Isn’t it the norm that annual performance reviews involve reviewing training requirements? Realistically, how often do these training requirements get ignored and/or forgotten about during the year? The answer, I’m afraid, is…
Our thoughts and prayers are with those whose lives were lost, and those injured, as well as their families in last week’s fertilizer plant explosion in West Texas. A few statements made in the press were a bit surprising and I wanted to share those with you. Before I…
Last week I was part of a conversation that made me really question why people (companies) would set themselves up for failure. Is it lack of knowledge? Lack of communication? Or maybe they are simply NEW to the process and don’t know what to expect.
But then I thought…
The analysis of past safety accidents was conducted primarily regionally, and with companies having an “experienced” workforce. Today the global economy is undergoing major shifts in manufacturing which is making the issue of finding, developing, and retaining experienced people more challenging than in the past. In “Brownfield” (developed) areas,…
I recently read a blog comment from an instructor in a well-known functional safety personnel certification program. The instructor bragged that for the last X courses, 100% of the students passed. In this program a course and an exam are developed by independent consultants who give the course, give…
Did you see my Changing the PVST Interval. Hey, my failure rates changed! post? There is more…
In addition to impacting the way the Partial Valve Stroke Test (PVST) is addressed in the SIL verification calculation, the PVST frequency…
I’ve been receiving several inquiries lately regarding the impact of the Partial Valve Stroke Test (PVST) interval on the failure rates of a final element. Specifically asking how does exSILentia® deal with this? exSILentia® allows users to specify if partial stroke testing is performed on their final…
A week ago Sunday I was traveling to Baton Rouge, LA. I was flying out of Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) connecting in Houston (George Bush Intercontinental Airport - IAH) with my final destination as Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport (BTR). Under normal circumstances I would probably have flown directly…