exida explains Blog

Product Certification

Over 60 new products received functional safety or cybersecurity certification this year. Those products and more…

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If you were going to build a bridge, you would want to make sure that it did not fall down if there were too many cars on the bridge.  One way that this is accomplished is to overdesign.  If the bridge is expected to hold at most 20,000 pounds,…

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After analyzing field failure data from hundreds of data sets from dozens of sources, it is becoming easy to see why results from different studies may vary by an order of magnitude or more. The data collection process itself varies by an order of magnitude or more!  A few…

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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…

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Several years ago we recognized that proof test coverage was an important variable that must be considered when doing PFDavg calculations. We ran some models and discovered that the difference between “perfect” proof test coverage (100%) and a very good 90% could mean a whole SIL…

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So you downloaded a product certificate from the exida website and you are trying to understand the information documented in the certificate.  Also, you likely want to know what stands behind the certificate and what was involved in the certification of the product.
 
I’m not…

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Click here to read Part 1

Now that you know the step-by-step process of product certification, now let’s take a look at the actual information on the certificate. 

In the left panel (gray background) you will find an exida certification logo. …

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The solenoid valve manufacturer provides an FMEDA report that lists “useful life = 12 years.”  Useful life is a reliability engineering term that indicates a point in time when the failure rate of a device will begin increasing rather rapidly.  Why do we care about this time interval?  That…

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There have been passionate debates in email and meetings about “Proven In Use” versus IEC 61508 certification. Most debates characterize these evaluation techniques as competing methods.  In 2000 when IEC 61511 was being written there were few IEC 61508 certified products on the market. The…

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Site Specific vs. Product Specific

During a field failure analysis study, it was discovered that the calculated failure rate of a specific device varied by more than 4X depending on installation site.  Particularly, it was one specific site with a high failure rate.  While any reliability engineer…

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I was recently asked how the PFDavg value in an exida FMEDA report was calculated. Those PFDavg values are calculated using the exSILentiaTM program. The person who posed the question was using the equations from Part 6 of IEC 61508 and got a different value. Why?

exSILentia…

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When I studied Reliability Engineering in graduate school, I was taught that failure rate data came from field failure studies.  I assumed that operating companies always kept accurate records when a piece of equipment failed.  I also assumed that someone would investigate the failures and assign a root cause.…

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exida has been gathering field failure data for over a decade.  At this point we have a total of over 60 billion unit operating hours of field data for process industry devices.  This data has been used to create a 2H database for components.  exida is using this component…

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