Safety Instrumented Systems

There are multiple definitions for safety instrumented function (SIF), lending to confusion around just what a SIF is, and what it is not. Failure to identify true SIFs leads to less safety. Identifying things as SIFs that are not, leads to unnecessary cost, burden, and complexity. - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

Emerson's Chuck Miller has written a whitepaper, Realizing the Capital and Operational Benefits of a ICSS System. It explores how the technologies and integrated approach of the basic process control system (BPCS) and SIS, combined with work processes, can improve capital expenditure (CapEx) and operational expenditure (OpEx) performance. - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

"COMAH-site operators who wait until the last minute to review their Safety Reports are missing out on the valuable information this exercise can provide, and could be putting their sites, their workers, and others at risk, warns Caroline Stoker." - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

"Sira Test & Certification has been actively involved in applying the international functional safety standard IEC 61508 since it was first published in 1998. Soon after the publication of the standard a U.K. government-funded initiative introduced the Conformity Assessment of Safety-related Systems (CASS) scheme, intended to provide an industry-wide approach and interpretation to IEC 61508 assessment and certification." - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

Emerson's Alan Harris has written a new whitepaper, DeltaV SIS HART Capabilities. It describes various HART capabilities that can be used with the DeltaV SIS system as well as HART diagnostics implementation best practices. - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

"Emerson Process Management vice president marketing and services, Hakan Erdamar, covered the importance of the company’s Safety Instrumented System (SIS), which offers more system uptime, safety integrity and architectural flexibility than traditional safety instru mented systems, he said. “A system that is able to utilise device diagnostics in a shutdown decision is clearly going to provide higher avail ability while maintaining the required safety level,” he said." - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

"The article “Integrated Safety: Has its Time Arrived?” appears in the October 2009 issue and can be accessed online. In the article, engineers, integrators, and industry representatives offer a variety of viewpoints on this hot button topic." - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

"Emerson Process Management has demonstrated its ongoing commitment to level measurement with the new Rosemount 5300 guided wave radar (GWR) level transmitters for SIL2 safety instrumented systems. Following successful third-party evaluation, the 5300 series now comes with the required failure modes, effects and diagnostic analysis (FMEDA) report. As a result, says Emerson, companies in the oil and gas production, refining, petrochemical, chemical and power industries can benefit from the superior performance of GWR technology while ensuring compliance with associated IEC industry standards." - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

"exida’s Functional Integrity Certification is the only independent, third party assessment that examines functional safety, security and availability attributes of an automation product through assessment of its design, testing and manufacturing. The program also scrutinizes how a product performs under stress, in the field and over time." - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

"QNX Software Systems today announced that it is pursuing IEC 61508 Safety Integrity Level 3 (SIL 3) certification for the QNX® Neutrino® RTOS, a fault-tolerant, high-performance operating system deployed in millions of mission-critical systems worldwide." - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

"Meridium, the global leader in asset performance management (APM), today announced a new product solution, SIS Management, at the ISA Expo ’09 conference in Houston." - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

"Engineers, integrators, and industry representatives offer a variety of viewpoints on this hot button topic. Through all the discussion, one thing is clear: Consensus has yet to be reached. Where do you stand on this issue?" - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

This application note shows the steps required to prepare DeltaV SIS SimulatePro for use with MiMiC SImulation Software. - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

"With the modular approach to both the automation and safety instrumented systems, the modules can be built and tested in parallel and hooked up once they are integrated with the vessel. The distributed approach provides significant CAPEX and schedule risk reductions over traditional, centralized process control, emergency shutdown, and fire and gas systems." - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

From http://blog.controldoctors.com/ - This video gives you a quick overview of Emerson's separate but integrated safety system, DeltaV SIS. - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

"The current demands from the Marine and Offshore industry require a high amount of flexibility and increasingly faster execution of FPSO projects. To help customers meet these requirements, Emerson offers the Modular Safety Concept (MSC) for DeltaV SIS applications (1.2MB PDF) in this industry. MSC provides end users the benefit of lowering overall risk and decreasing project lead time." - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

"Bringing process control and instrumented safety systems together while still keeping them separate provides benefits beyond risk reduction" - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

The 5300 series makes it possible to meet safety requirements while maintaining maximum plant availability and reducing lifecycle costs - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

"The question of integration with respect to safety instrumented systems (SIS) and basic process control systems (BPCS) continues unabated. Emerson's Mike Boudreaux alerted me to a great article, The Question of Integration, in the June issue of Control Engineering Asia magazine." - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

"The question is how to provide an integrated control and safety solution with advanced functionality and productivity, without compromising safety and security.... It is safer, renders a lower SIL requirement, and less expensive to implement physically separate and diverse, independent safety and control systems, with smart integration at the information, configuration, asset management, and HMI levels. All the capabilities of field diagnostics, asset management, including partial stroke testing, can be implemented effectively through smart integration. " - Mike Boudreaux

Amen! - Mike Boudreaux

"Part of Emerson’s Smart SIS offering, Emerson’s Ovation SIS was certified as suitable for SIS applications up to and including SIL 3." - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

By picking the brains of functional safety experts, industrial cyber-security standards makers hope to make gains. Meanwhile, some companies are launching new business plans based on a tighter alignment between safety and cyber security. - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

Emerson's Riyaz Ali recently wrote an Inside Functional Safety article titled, Digital Technology: A remedy for sick shutdown valves in Safety Instrumented System (SIS) applications. - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

"Jonas Berge explains how a smart safety instrumented system (SIS) with integrated HART capability can boost diagnostics capability and increase process availability." - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

"“The fundamental safety challenge to confront the major hazards industries is to drive down the rate of process safety incidents such as leaks and spills caused by loss of containment,” says Lee Allford, manager — EPSC operations." - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

"Overall, Sellafield’s experience with smarts has been good. It is the nature of articles like this to dwell on problems and underplay benefits. Smarts are a done deal, and we have no option but to use them along with the rest of industry." - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet

"EEMUA, the Engineering Equipment & Materials Users' Association, the Energy Industries Council (EIC) and Oil & Gas UK jointly announce publication of a new industry guide: 'Guide to the application of IEC 61511 to safety instrumented systems in the UK process industries'. - Mike Boudreaux from Bookmarklet