Yokogawa releases Enhanced Version of ProSafe®-RS Safety Instrumented System

Yokogawa Electric Corporation announces to release 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 our customers in ensuring safety throughout the plant lifecycle.
Development Background:

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 that have identified poor clarity in requirements definition and communication as the major contributing factor. 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 our customers has thus been rising in ensuring the safety of their plants by obtaining compliance with the IEC 61508 and IEC 61511 international standards*1 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:
1. Enhanced support for FSM planning and implementation
2. Enhanced support for hand-over of FSM information
3. Enhanced support for a better understanding of safety instrumented systems engineering and operation