Over the course of several blogs , I will talk about getting realistic failure rate data, where this failure data comes from, and how different methods of failure data analysis compare. I think if you understand this, you will begin to get a very good feel of what it…
exida explains Blog
- by Dr. William Goble, CFSE
- Thursday, June 04, 2015
- Functional Safety
Getting Realistic Failure Rate Data - Part 2
- by Dr. William Goble, CFSE
- Monday, June 01, 2015
- Functional Safety
Getting Realistic Failure Rate Data - Part 1
Over the course of several blogs , I will talk about getting realistic failure rate data, where this failure data comes from, and how different methods of failure data analysis compare. I think if you understand this, you will begin to get a very good feel of what it…
- by Denise Chastain Knight, P.E., CFSE, CCPSC
- Wednesday, May 27, 2015
- Functional Safety
Close Enough? Not so Much
Performing a SIL Verification calculation on preliminary design information can be a very useful tool to dial in the Safety Instrumented Function (SIF), Safety Requirements Specification (SRS) content , and define critical elements for the field component purchase specifications. Conceptual verification is typically performed quickly with general design information.…
- by Iwan van Beurden, CFSE
- Thursday, April 30, 2015
- Software
LOPAx™: This is Awesome!
You will probably not hear me sing the LEGO® Movie’s “Everything is Awesome” song, I’ll keep that private (and you should be thankful to me for that). However as we just released the LOPAx™ module of the new exSILentia® v4 platform, I have come to…
- by John Yozallinas, CFSE
- Wednesday, April 01, 2015
- Certification
Competency: Cutting Corners?
Let’s turn our attention to home remodeling projects for a minute… literally cutting corners.
Most people are familiar with trim molding (baseboard and chair rail). Laying out the trim on long flat surfaces is pretty easy: measure, cut, nail, paint… done. Ok, sometimes it goes: measure, cut, measure again,…
- by John Yozallinas, CFSE
- Thursday, March 26, 2015
- Functional Safety
Texas City Refinery Explosion: Ten Years Later
This week marks the 10th anniversary of the Texas City Refinery Explosion. Is it any safer to work in the oil refinery industry since then? That’s not an easy question to answer. It’s difficult to get a yardstick out to measure safety. But if we consider the number of…
- by Denise Chastain Knight, P.E., CFSE, CCPSC
- Tuesday, March 24, 2015
- Functional Safety
Challenge the LOPA - 10th anniversary of the BP Texas City Refinery explosion
On the 10th anniversary of the BP Texas City Refinery explosion, let’s pause to reflect on one of the lessons learned from this disaster. The process had multiple layers of protection, including operating procedures, BPCS control and alarms, independent alarms, and relief devices. There was additional instrumentation…
- by Steve Gandy, CFSP
- Friday, March 13, 2015
- Certification
What is Competency Anyway?
I’ve been following some discussions from one of the online forums regarding competency and it’s clear from the correspondence that the issue of competency is still very subjective. It made me think about “what is competency?” To me it’s a blend of knowledge and experience and just how well…
- by Iwan van Beurden, CFSE
- Thursday, February 26, 2015
- Software
Using the PHAx™ Libraries
Conducting a Process Hazard Analysis (PHA) can be quite laborious. In a HAZOP, you will systematically evaluate the applicable deviations for each node, within each unit, within each plant. The exSILentia® v4 PHAx™ module is setup to use…
- by Todd Stauffer
- Tuesday, February 17, 2015
- Alarm Management
Help Your Operators Defeat the Situation Awareness Demons!
Contrary to what you might have guessed, the “Defeat of the Situation Awareness Demons” is not a new video game on XBOX or Playstation. It is a set of eight (8) factors which undermine effective Situation Awareness. It can be applied to operators in process plants to characterize human…
- by Ted Stewart, CFSP, exidaCSP
- Friday, January 30, 2015
- Certification
CFSE/CFSP: Why and How to Become One
As an engineer responsible for critical industrial processes, we face a variety of challenges:
- coping with new and changing standards
- increased pressures for process uptime and plant safety
- a growing list of responsibilities
- decreased availability of support personnel
This makes…
- by Dr. William Goble, CFSE
- Tuesday, January 27, 2015
- Functional Safety
The exida FMEDA Process - Accurate Failure Data for the Process Industries
In this blog, I will talk about the FMEDA method and how it can generate realistically accurate failure rate data.
The first question we have to ask is “why do you need failure rate data ?”
One of the fundamental concepts in today’s functional safety standard, IEC 61508 and…
- by Dr. William Goble, CFSE
- Wednesday, January 21, 2015
- Functional Safety
Field Data Validation with Predictive Analytics
Who cares about field failure data? Why are we even here?
IEC 61511 – Fundamental Concepts
The fundamental concepts from our functional safety standards are the probabilistic performance based design. Many of you know that this was terribly controversial when this was first proposed. Even to this day, there…
- by John Yozallinas, CFSE
- Wednesday, December 03, 2014
- Software
Seat-of-your-pants Software?
I’ve had software development folks tell me that the “just do it” approach is a valid lifecycle model for SW development. In their context, this means writing the code based on limited marketing and design information and then backfilling the requirements and design specifications to describe what was done. …
- by Todd Stauffer
- Thursday, November 06, 2014
- Alarm Management
Alarm Management Goes Global with the Release of IEC 62682!
The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) has just published the first edition of IEC 62682 “Management of alarm systems for the process industries,” a global standard on alarm management. This new global standard was developed based on the ANSI/ISA-18.2 standard of the same name, which was published in…