- by Eman Hamouda
- Wednesday, July 17, 2024
- Functional Safety
Why is Memory Management important for Functional Safety?
What is Memory Mapping?
Memory mapping is a technique used in computer systems to manage memory resources safely, it involves creating a virtual address space that corresponds directly to the physical memory or to a portion of it, this allows programs to access memory in a way that is…
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- by Dr. William Goble, CFSE
- Monday, June 24, 2024
- Certification
Why do we do probabilistic models to predict risk reduction? Check the box only?
I had an engineer from a European Certification Body ask me why exida would bother paying any attention to these failure rate numbers, especially on mechanical devices? He said that he does not know anyone who actually uses them! To answer why exida pays attention to failure rates, we…
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- by Jonathan Moore
- Wednesday, June 12, 2024
- Functional Safety
Have we reached peak C?
The C programming language has undoubtably extremely successful. It consistently ranks highly in the various rankings of most popular programming languages however these studies seem to be measured. C is not a language that is naturally suited to having safety requirements given to it. So, unsuited is it to…
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- by Steve Gandy, CFSP
- Wednesday, January 31, 2024
- Functional Safety
What Does Root Cause Analysis Really Mean?
This is an intriguing question. One that I often ask my classes when I’m teaching our FSE100 Functional Safety course. Very often, they do not know or do not fully understand what this means and why it is important.
The IEC61511 standard requires that any failures that occur within the…
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- by Patrick O'Brien
- Monday, November 27, 2023
- Industrial Cybersecurity
What is a Pragmatic Approach to Cybersecurity?
Now that we have a little bit of context on what's driving our current cybersecurity landscape. The next question is, “where does this pragmatic approach come in? What is a pragmatic approach? What does the word pragmatic mean? The dictionary definition is dealing with things sensibly and realistically in a…
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- by Patrick O'Brien
- Wednesday, November 15, 2023
- Industrial Cybersecurity
Many Different Forces are Influencing ICS Cybersecurity Adoption
When we look at some of the challenges that are facing control systems, we also have to think about what forces are influencing how asset owners adopt cybersecurity. We'll talk about four of those main drivers that play a role in cybersecurity implementation.
![](https://www.exida.com/2023/cyber-drivers.jpg)
National Standards…
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- by Patrick O'Brien
- Tuesday, September 12, 2023
- Functional Safety
Machine Safety Goals
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…
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- 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…
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- 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…
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- 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…
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- 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…
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- 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…
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- 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.…
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- by Steve Gandy, CFSP
- Friday, June 16, 2023
- Industrial Cybersecurity
Creating a Cyber Hygiene Plan
One of the things that automation companies are beginning to do is to plan for cyber hygiene. More and more companies are implementing automation specific awareness training for their employees. They conduct periodic exercises which like sending phishing emails to see who if you respond. They might leave USB…
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- by Patrick O'Brien
- Thursday, June 15, 2023
- Industrial Cybersecurity
Automation Cybersecurity - Myths vs. Reality
In today’s automation systems environment, certain myths continue to persist. For example, "cyber attacks are only a concern for big companies". Although it may be less likely to be targeted by, say, a nation state attack, we’ve seen that malware can cause a shutdown of a system or trigger a…
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