|
|
Front Page News
-
|
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"...
|
-
|
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...
|
-
|
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...
|
-
|
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...
|
-
|
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...
|
-
|
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...
|
-
|
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...
|
-
|
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...
|
-
|
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...
|
-
|
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,...
|
-
|
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...
|
-
|
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...
|
-
|
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...
|
-
|
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”...
|
-
|
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)...
|
-
|
Was not the response I was expecting to hear from an audience member during my presentation on new SIS (safety instrumented system) hardware development at this week’s ISA Expo. He obviously was concerned over my suggestion that with new SIS technology...
|
-
|
Ever ask yourself why you went to engineering school? For some of you it might have been the illusion of a great paying job, for others maybe it was your curiosity of figuring out how things worked, for me it was both. Today I have the pleasure of explaining...
|
-
|
Yes it’s true, Europe has started a two year phase out of the risk categories; B, 1, 2, 3, & 4 as established by EN 954:1996 and hence referenced in numerous US based standards such as NFPA 79, ANSI B11, S2, ANSI B155.1, etc. to name a few....
|
-
|
You would think that the simple word “safety” would be so well understood by now that, …………well……..even a caveman could get it. Unfortunately, I find we are still struggling to come to a consensus....
|
-
|
I received a copy of a recent marketing message (from a reputable safety system company) stating embedded safety and control solutions might cause plantile dysfunction? That’s right, and it was supposedly clinically proven? This obvious attempt...
|
-
|
Sorry for my absence (for those actually missed me). I promise, after I get back from my family vacation July 25 th , I promise to be more consistent with weekly blog entries after my vacation. I’ve been saving up some very good material, and I’m...
|
-
|
Sorry for my absence last week, I was attending the 2007 Siemens Automation Summit, or as I tried to call it SAS. Okay, I admit, that was a poor attempt to jump on the TLA (three letter acronym) bandwagon as Honeywell did with their annual user group...
|
-
|
We’ll – from where I stand it’s been since 1999 that the voluntary consensus standards began their migration march of updating approaches for machine safe guarding. That first standard was RIA 15.06 for industrial robots. One of many...
|
-
|
Earlier this week I listened in as some world recognized experts blathered on about the dangers of embedded safety systems. These gentlemen represented one of the market leaders in process safety, and I was hoping to learn some new things about our industry....
|
-
|
It was my intent to publish this BLOG last Friday. Unfortunately, right in the middle of it I got a friendly reminder that my paper for the 2007 Petroleum and Chemical Industry Committee Technical Conference was DUE….The BLOGGing would have to...
|
|
|
|