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 process.  That's right, there will be day where it is commonly ...

 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) in compliance to ISA 84.00.01-2004 (IEC 61511 Mod.)? I think he did a nice job ...

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 there’s no degradation of safety when you have a partial shutdown and, ...

This week our office had a visit from one of the most well respected automation journalists (and fellow BLOGGER), Mr. Walt Boyes, Editor and Chief of CONTROL magazine.  It turned out to be a great visit as Walt shared with us his vision of the market and opinions of the major players (including us).  Of course you can read all about ...

Recently I got caught up in a reliability discussion between a user and a vendor.  The user worked for a large O&G company, and the vendor worked for a large company who manufactured process instrumentation.  In this particular exchange, the user was interested in the vendor’s safety shut off valve package.  While acting ...

Working in and around process safety applications for most of my professional career (just under 20 years), I've enjoyed watching, discussing and participating on many technical challenges and advances regarding safety instrumented systems (SIS).  Now as we begin a new year, a new wave of technology is beginning to unfold that will ...

I got an interesting question this week from one of our sales people.  He told me that a competitor, new to the process safety market, supplied his customer with a list of their users who are compliant with 29CFR1910.119.  He wondered if we had a similar list or a way to neutralize their insinuation that their system was better ...