exida - Functional Safety Services, IACS Cybersecurity, Alarm Management, IEC 61508 Certification

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White Paper: Beyond the Weakest Link: Designing for Reliability with Smart Capacitor Management

This whitepaper explores the critical role of the electrolytic capacitor as the “weakest link” in a product's useful life. It details how environmental factors, specifically thermal and voltage impacts, can significantly reduce a capacitor's longevity. By applying appropriate derating techniques, designers can mitigate these effects and extend the product's useful…

Recorded Webinars: Designing for Functional Safety: A Developer’s Introduction

Welcome to your essential guide to functional safety, tailored specifically for product developers. In a world where technology is increasingly integrated into every aspect of our lives—from industrial robots to autonomous vehicles—the potential for harm from product malfunctions makes functional safety not just important, but critical.

This webinar cuts through the complexity to provide a clear understanding of what functional safety truly entails and why it's critical for product success. We'll start by defining functional safety not by its often-confusing official terms, but as a structured methodology for managing risk through defined engineering processes, essential product design requirements, and probabilistic analysis. The “north star” goals? To ensure your product not only works reliably but, if it does fail, it does so in a safe and predictable manner.

We'll dive into two fundamental concepts: the Safety Lifecycle, a detailed engineering process focused on design quality to minimize systematic failures, and Probabilistic, Performance-Based Design using reliability metrics to minimize random hardware failures. You'll learn about IEC 61508, the foundational standard for functional safety, and how numerous industry-specific standards derive from it.

The webinar will walk you through the Engineering Design phases: analyzing hazards and required risk reduction, realizing optimal designs, and ensuring safe operation. We'll demystify the Performance Concept and the critical Safety Integrity Level (SIL), explaining its definition, criteria (systematic capability, architectural constraints, PFD), and how it relates to industry-specific priorities.

Discover key Design Verification techniques like DFMEA/DDMA and FMEDA, emphasizing how these tools help identify and address problems early in development. We'll detail the FMEDA technique showing how design decisions directly impact predictions like safe and dangerous failure rates, diagnostic coverage, and useful life. Finally, we'll cover Functional Safety Certification, explaining its purpose, process, and what adjustments to your development process can set you up for success.

News Item: exida Expert to Keynote at European Space Agency Conference

Sellersvile, PA - exida is excited to announce that Dr. Molly O’Brien, part of a team of experts developing a certification scheme for Safety Functions that include Machine Learning (ML), will deliver a keynote presentation at the European Space Agency's (ESA) Software Product Assurance Conference . The event, which brings…

Recorded Webinars: How Does a SIF Achieve its SIL Target

For A Safety Instrumented Function (SIF) to achieve its target SIL, the IEC61511 standard requires that it meets three design requirements: PFDavg/PFH, Architectural Constraints and Systematic Capability. Many people consider meeting the PFDavg/PFH target sufficient, but this is not the case. A SIF is an Independent Protection Layer (IPL), which is required to satisfy 4 requirements:

S – must be specifically designed to prevent the consequence of the hazardous event

I – must be completely Independent from all other IPLs

D – must be designed to have sufficient defense against random and systematic failures

A – must be auditable in terms of being able to be tested and maintained

Therefore, meeting the random hardware failure dependability is the PFDavg/PFH and meeting the systematic failure dependability is the Systematic capability. The architectural constraint requirement is required to counteract any unrealist parameters used in the PFDavg/PFH calculations and determines the level of Hardware Fault Tolerance (HFT) required. The webinar examines what’s involved with determining the PFDavg/PFH and the 9 key variables associated with this, as well as the importance of tracking Useful Life, and how to determine the HFT using the tables in IEC61508 or the table in IEC61511. It also looks at equipment qualification for the SIF and the use of IEC61508 certified devices or Prior Use justification to meet the systematic requirements.

What you will learn?

What is involved with determining the SIL achieved by the SIF
The importance of meeting the 3 design requirements
How to meet the systematic requirement
How to justify use of the equipment

Who should attend?

SIS designers and Engineering contractors
SIS maintenance personnel
Plant Managers and Supervisors

Blog Entry: How Does A SIF Achieve its SIL Target?

This is a question I’ve been asked many times, with some stating that as long as the PFDavg (or PFH) meets the target SIL then that’s fine. Whereas this statement is partially true, it is not the full answer. IEC61511 defines the criteria for meeting the requirements of an Independent…

News Item: exida Appoints Richard (Richie) Butler as Country Manager for UK and Ireland

SELLERSVILLE, PA — exida, a global leader in functional safety, cybersecurity, and alarm management, is pleased to announce the appointment of Richard (Richie) Butler as the new Country Manager for the UK and Ireland. Born and raised in the south of the county but currently residing in North Tipperary, Ireland,…