Efficiency and safety
Version 4.02 of Yokogawa’s ProSafe RS significantly expands the product spectrum in terms of efficiency and safety. The integration of iDefine makes functional safety management a whole lot easier. It’s high time we reported on it.
Conservative, and rightly so
While industrial software continues to advance at an ever more rapid pace, safety instrumented systems (SIS) tend to develop somewhat more conservatively. There’s a very good reason for this: errors in safety systems impact not only on financial values and the environment but also on human lives. It’s a conservative attitude, and rightly so. Whether a system is integrated or remains isolated depends on the application at hand.
Yokogawa’s ProSafe RS SIS supports both integration with the Centum VP DCS or a third-party system and strictly standalone operation. It adapts to the requirements of each individual application. It is fully compliant with IEC 61511 and suitable for any application up to Safety Integrity Level 3 (SIL 3). More than 2000 projects involving more than 10,000 safety control stations have been implemented since ProSafe RS was first launched in the market.
iDefine – what’s new?
Module based engineering for ProSafe RS
iDefine provides a library based module engineering function, in other words users can load SIS typicals which have already been defined and tested into their current project. These typicals can then be instanced from the project using bulk engineering functions. That not only saves time – it also ensures that each safety relevant loop is engineered error-free. Once all safety instrumented functions (SIF) have been configured and tested, they can be transferred to the ProSafe RS system via the integrated iDefine interface.
[ot-caption title=”Module based engineering with iDefine” url=”https://www.yokogawa.com/eu/blog/chemical-pharma/app/uploads/2017/05/iDefine_Bild1_en.png”]
Support for functional safety management
Compared to traditional editor techniques like function block diagrams (FBD) or ladder logic, the iDefine logic editor expresses safety requirement specifications (SRS) more closely. The iDefine logic editor provides a precise view of the SRS (cause & effect, state transition diagram). All of this can be done without any special programming knowledge. The stronger emphasis on the SRS enables the configuration in iDefine to be used as documentation without any adaptation. In practice, this means that the documentation is always up to date – at all times during the configuration process and subsequently throughout the lifecycle. The benefit is undeniable.
[ot-caption title=”iDefine – overview of a functional safety management system” url=”https://www.yokogawa.com/eu/blog/chemical-pharma/app/uploads/2017/05/iDefine_Blog_pic2.png”]
SIFs defined and instantly tested
The behavior of a safety instrumented function (SIF) can be dynamically recorded and tested using the ESD simulator function (refer to the diagram above). This speeds up configuring enormously. The SIFs are tested at the same time as they are defined, so that any errors are instantly detected and corrected – errors that would not normally be noticed until the FAT or maybe even commissioning, when editing and documenting are much more complicated and in the worst case impossible.
Quick questions: A user’s opinion
By Diana Vargas Avila
Air Liquide Senior Project Engineer, Process Control & Control Systems
– Digital Initiatives Innovation and Development Frankfurt & Kraków
Air Liquide Local Senior Expert
Question: “Ms Vargas, what in your view are the benefits of iDefine?”
Answer: “Safety and standardization are immensely important for our plants. The ability to engineer and verify our tested and proven SIS typicals quickly and reliably in new projects safeguards our quality and our competitiveness by cutting the time and costs for engineering. Yokogawa’s iDefine software lets us do that without any problems.”
Question: “Are there any other advantages and did you experience any teething troubles with iDefine?”
Answer: “Another advantage, as I see it, is that the modules can be configured as cause & effect, state machine and sequences. That’s what users are familiar with. That simplifies the configuration process and gives us a better overview. The new tool took some getting used to initially but now we’re all agreed that it was well worth the effort. We also profit from the integration with the AD Suite because it improves alarm management and we can use High Performance HMI.”
Please contact me if you have any questions or you’d like to learn more. We care about what you think. Feel free to write a comment.
