From a machine safety management perspective, what goals are you looking to establish? Building a company safety culture, building awareness of the hazards, building the "buy in" to do things right and do things consistently is very important. It can't be done by a single person. It takes the…
exida explains Blog
- by Patrick O'Brien
- Wednesday, September 06, 2023
- Functional Safety
Forces Influencing Machine Safety Adoption
What is driving machine safety adoption? What are some of the key questions that companies are trying to answer when it comes to machine safety? For industrial facilities, whether it's a chemical plant, or a machine application, it ultimately comes down to facility risk management. Companies want to provide…
- by Patrick O'Brien
- Thursday, August 17, 2023
- Functional Safety
Benefits of Using IEC 62061 Machine Safety Templates
Why would someone consider purchasing templates as a starting point? First off, it decreases the amount of time and energy it takes to build out the program. If you think about starting from a blank page, as opposed to starting with something that is 80 to 90% of the…
- by Steve Gandy, CFSP
- Tuesday, August 15, 2023
- Functional Safety
The Importance Of Considering Common Cause with Redundant Systems
Common Cause is one of those variables that is not always considered important when it comes to SIL compliance. And yet, for redundant systems, it can have a significant impact on the PFDavg and Risk Reduction achieved (in Low Demand mode) or PFH (in high or continuous mode). Most of the…
- by Patrick O'Brien
- Wednesday, July 12, 2023
- Functional Safety
Why Functional Safety Management is Important for Machine Safety
Functional Safety Management (FSM) is important for a few key reasons. First, it governs the entire machine safety lifecycle. Regardless of which standards we pick, we need to have the management plan in place to make sure we follow those steps and that we do them consistently.
Allocating lifecycle…
- by Patrick O'Brien
- Monday, July 03, 2023
- Functional Safety
Machinery Accidents - Today’s Harsh Reality
During 2017, there were over 36,000 injuries related to machinery in the United States. There were 6200 non-fatal amputations, nearly 60% involving machinery. There were close to 3000 fatalities in 2019. Machine accidents are often overlooked because there aren't multiple fatality explosions or major news events like you see…
- by Dr. William Goble, CFSE
- Wednesday, June 21, 2023
- Functional Safety
IEC 61508 – Two Key Fundamental Concepts
We want our system to work. We're going to do everything we can to make it work properly. If it doesn't work, we want it to fail in a predictable and hopefully safe manner. If the failure modes are predictable, we can design the equipment to be fail safe.…
- by Dr. William Goble, CFSE
- Wednesday, May 24, 2023
- Functional Safety
FMEDA Webinar Series Playlist Now Available
As the inventor of the FMEDA process, our experts planned a series of eight webinars introducing FMEDA concepts and methods available in the Youtube playlist below.
The series starts with an introduction for the beginner, quickly moves to medium level topics, and finally, at the end, covers the more…
- by Paddy Healy
- Tuesday, April 18, 2023
- Functional Safety
What is a FMEDA?
In the 1980’s, there was a raging debate in the functional safety committee about redundancy versus diagnostics. Some said functional safety could only be achieved with redundant systems. This was strongly supported by Triple Modular Redundant (2oo3) safety PLC vendors.
Others argued that diagnostics would be an equal or…
- by exida Webinars
- Thursday, January 19, 2023
- Functional Safety
Are You Measuring the Performance of Your SIS?
I’ve been teaching our FSE100 course now for nearly 10 years and it always amazes me that when teaching the course, the number of times I find that end users in the class are not really measuring the performance of their SIS. In most cases, they are doing…
- by Julia V. Bukowski
- Thursday, September 15, 2022
- Functional Safety
To Be Meaningful & Useful Failure Rates Must Be Validated
Engineers and managers who work with safety equipment have likely seen a failure rate of some kind quoted for the equipment. Some equipment even comes with a safety certification stating the failure rate given certain assumptions about how the equipment will be used.
The numbers sometimes turn out to be…
- by Dr. William Goble, CFSE
- Wednesday, August 31, 2022
- Functional Safety
Evolution of Engineering Design – Advanced Diagnostics vs Redundancy
I recently studied the design changes made on the T series of old British cars (a hobby) made by the MG Company in England from 1936-1955. Models progressed over that time period including the TA, TB, TC, TD, and TF. I noted a strange looking two position switch on the dash…
- by Steve Gandy, CFSP
- Thursday, August 18, 2022
- Functional Safety
Functional Safety Assessments – Why Aren’t They Being Done?
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…
- 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…