Yokogawa has announced the release of ProSafe-RS R4.02.00. With this latest release of the ProSafe-RS safety instrumented system, a number of functional safety management (FSM) related functions have been added to the Automation Design Suite (AD Suite) engineering environment for ProSafe-RS that will support customers by ensuring safety throughout the plant lifecycle.
In energy and basic materials industries such as oil, gas, petrochemicals and chemicals, various safety measures must be taken to prevent incidents and to protect the environment. One such measure is the introduction of safety instrumented systems, which can safely initiate an emergency plant shutdown if a critical failure is detected.
The initiating causes of such incidents have been investigated by regulatory bodies, which have identified poor clarity in requirements definition and communication as contributing factors. Further to this, increased attention has been paid to the role that FSM plays throughout the plant operational lifecycle in keeping the risks of unsafe practices or failures within an acceptable range. Interest among customers has thus been rising to ensure the safety of their plants by obtaining compliance with the IEC 61508 and IEC 61511 international standards on functional safety. However, FSM is a complex subject requiring a diversity of expertise to carry out tasks such as deciding policies, creating management systems, drawing up plans, managing their execution, and training personnel. To help customers accurately define, test, and understand their systems and to simplify the task of ensuring that a system remains in compliance with the IEC 61508 and IEC 61511 functional safety standards during the engineering phase and while in operation, Yokogawa has added new functions to AD Suite.
Enhancements
Enhanced support for FSM planning and implementation
Yokogawa has added an FSM tool to AD Suite that facilitates the creation of a management framework, the drawing up of working plans, and the management of implementation. With this tool, users of AD Suite can easily draw up organisation charts, workflows, and check sheets. This reduces workload and helps to ensure that FSM is carried out correctly, thus reducing the likelihood that non-compliant activities will pose a risk to plant and personnel.
Enhanced support for hand-over of FSM information
To ensure the proper execution of FSM over the entire plant lifecycle, a system is needed that can help those in charge of operations and maintenance ensure that information is handed over at shift changes. All software created with AD Suite is managed in a database. With this new function, AD Suite is now also able to collectively manage all engineering information such as FSM-related organisation charts and workflows, as well as test scripts and results. This function simplifies master management and helps to prevent problems caused when different groups of personnel are not referring to the same version of information. All changes within the software environment require a configuration change notification and are logged and readily visible to all users. A fully up-to-date version of any document is always available. This helps to ensure that shift changes go smoothly.
Enhanced support for a better understanding of safety instrumented systems engineering and operation
AD Suite now supports the use of high-level engineering and definition languages such as cause and effect matrix and state/transition diagrams for the input and output of specifications that are based on customer requirements and converted into executable code for the configuration of ProSafe-RS 4.02 control logic. By using the cause and effect matrix and the state/transition diagram, users can simulate how the safety instrumented system will operate in an emergency. With this function, our customers can identify and soon correct problems in the safety requirement specification that are caused by factors such as a failure to consider certain user requirements. To help meet the IEC 61151 requirement for operators to have an understanding of plant safety instrumented functions, this function can also be used to provide training in safety instrumentation.
For more information contact Christie Cronje, Yokogawa South Africa, +27 (0)11 831 6300, christie.cronje@za.yokogawa.com, www.yokogawa.com/za
| Tel: | +27 11 831 6300 |
| Fax: | +27 11 86 411 8144 |
| Email: | yma.info-za@yokogawa.com |
| www: | www.yokogawa.com/za |
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