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.
Their discussion covered topics such as layers of protection, benefits of TMR over dual redundancy, keeping your SIS separate and independent from your DCS, and cyber security and safety fieldbus. Their 30 minute (or so) presentation was followed up by a 15 minute Q&A session. I gave these guys my time and respect to listen in and hopes of learning something. Instead, I left hugely disappointed that it turned into a pure marketing FUD (Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt) campaign.
For those who were not able to listen, please allow me to sum up, what you missed….there are no benefits for embedded systems (just increased risk), safety field bus is confusing, intelligent field instruments are not that smart, pimple faced computer hackers and terrorist cells are looking to cripple your SIS, vinyl records are superior to CD’s, carburetion is more efficient than fuel injection, slide rules provide greater accuracy than calculators, and HDTV is pure hype….
About 17 years ago, as a young adventurous engineer, after MUCH investigation, I bought into the concept of analog transmitters over discrete switches. I found we could gain much by veering away from our company “proven” design for using 12 discrete switches (two out of three voting for Low, Low-Low, High, and High-High), with 3 “smart” analog transmitters. I believed this simple approach could achieve better functionality, higher availability and greater safety from our 20 year old corporate standard. The guys writing the standards were only a few years away from retirement and didn’t want to hear my nonsense. I took action, made the change, and while looking for praise, all I got was a nasty reprimand from my manager. Later this revelation would become company standard, and help propel me to move towards an automation company that was more in line with my forward thinking.
That was just one year before I invented the internet J