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Front Page News
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I just read an interesting article in the September issue of InTech titled "Operators on alert". It covers the controversial issue around how much safety credit (i.e. risk reduction) can be given to an operator's response to an alarm. This...
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I'm taking a stance, and publicly telling you my vision on the issue of separation and integration for safety and control. When this happens, is still up to debate. I believe that one day it will only take one control system to automate your critical...
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As I began my career in Process Control almost 20 years ago, I remember asking my mentor why our process & instrumentation diagrams (P&ID’s) showed field instruments and final control elements wired up to two different control systems. His...
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A technical standard is an established norm or requirement. It is usually a formal document that establishes uniform engineering or technical criteria, methods, processes and practices, often referred to as ‘good engineering practice’. There’s...
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This past fall I was appointed as the Safety theme chair for ISA expo 2009 (Oct 6-8 2009). Essentially what this means is that I’m responsible for putting together the entire track of safety sessions. At first I was honored and excited about the...
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The phone rings on my desk. It’s an engineer from a manufacturing company in Colorado calling to ask for advice. He wants to know if a contactor should be applied to an output circuit to achieve a safe circuit? What’s wrong here? Yea, the...
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Next week (Wednesday, November 5th) I have the honor of delivering a 45 minute presentation at the exiderdome in New York City. If you haven’t heard, or don’t know what exiderdome is, then check it out at www.sea.siemens.com/exiderdome the...
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One would think that simple math would be sufficient when dealing with safety systems? For the most part this is true, as today, simplified formulas are widely accepted for modeling safety instrumented systems. The calculations used to help predict the...
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Check this out! Do you wire your e-stops to a standard (non Safety) PLC or controller in order to comply with the mandatory category 0 or 1 stop? Think twice is my advice! Yes, the safety standards such as NFPA 79, 9.2.5.4.1.3 require that an e-stop "shall...
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Last week the Associated Press reported that an executive at the Imperial Sugar Co. testified at a hearing before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions subcommittee on workplace safety that he had found such "shocking" and "disgraceful"...
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Last week I was notified that my blog was getting picked up by a new website dedicated to Safety. Stay tuned, as www.Safetybase.com will be going live soon. It’s exciting to be a part of this new educational-based safety website dedicated to serve...
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Last week, about 40 process safety enthusiasts attended the spring 2008 S84 meeting in West Palm Beach, Florida. The main committee meeting generally consists on brief updates on the individual working groups and the maintenance of the current ANSI/ISA...
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Great News! My machine safety blog is now part of an innovative new educational-based safety website that’s sole purpose is to serve the safety needs of general industry. I’m excited to be a part of a group of industry experts who’ve...
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How many hands can I see for “safety device”? Now, how many of you say – no , an e-stopping device is not a safety device? I see! So the room is practically divided into two camps. One of the camps has several individuals that sit on...
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Tolerable risk is the term used for the past several years referring to a level of residual risk for a given hazard after applying risk reduction measures. ANSI B11.TR3; 2000 further defines tolerable risk as: Risk that is accepted for a given task and...
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Last month, Siemens Energy and Automation released a new safety I/O card that claims to be the first Hart, Analog input, SIL 3 http://www2.sea.siemens.com/News/Industrial/First-SIL-3-Certified-Hart-Analog-Input-Module.htm While some may find this as a...
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Last month we decided it was time to upgrade the old family car. After searching for several weeks, we decided on a very nice, 3 year-old, certified pre-owned. While I haven’t purchased a used vehicle in several years, I felt comfortable in this...
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For so many years we have been trained (brainwashed) to believe more redundancy = more safety. While for some situations it’s true. Increase your level of redundancy your system will get better safety performance. However, if you do it WRONG, it’s...
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So you’re faced with the question of whether that trusty old transmitter you’ve been using as part of your safety shutdown system can meet the “prior use” requirements described in Section 11.5.3 of ANSI/ISA-84.00.01-2004 (IEC...
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In attending last week’s 63rd Annual Texas A&M Instrumentation symposium, I was shocked to hear from a well respected safety expert that SFF (Safe failure fraction) was a failed metric. No explanation, just that SFF was pretty much useless,...
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I often hear discussions about NFPA 79 (Electrical Standard for Industrial Machinery) having more importance than the ANSI B11 series of machine tool standards. Conversely, there’s an equal if not larger camp of user’s that profess the ANSI...
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Did you know that fatal automobile accidents in the USA would drop considerably if drivers (and passengers) wore approved protective headgear and flack jackets? While that might seem pretty obvious, it’s just not practical. For years automation...
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Here it is Friday, December 21, 2007 about 2:30pm, while most process safety specialists and marketing managers are enjoying the tidings; I just had to get something off my chest before I begin my holiday break. I was hoping to make my 2008 Process Safety...
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I received an e-mail inquiring about a product being “listed” or not, which made me stop and think about how far we have come in the past 10 years regarding safety systems and their “type” of certification. The term “listed”...
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Have you had a chance to catch Bill Goble’s Hydrocarbon Processing (October 2007 issue) editorial titled “Still not using a safety PLC?” Essentially Bill addresses the question of whether you can use conventional equipment (PLC or DCS)...
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