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 ...

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 short of it, well it’s my companies corporate marketing extravaganza geared for the ...

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 predictions but I find myself still pontificating on what next year will ...

 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 ...

The cover story of the April edition of Automation World was titled “how much integration is right”.  Of course they were covering the highly controversial topic of integrating your control and safety system.  Many globally recognized experts were quoted in the article, but to spare you the time, please allow me to ...

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 ...