TRUTH # 2
Quality of a SIS has a direct impact on plant performance

QUALITY ISN’T always implemented the same way by every company; Quality Assurance procedures have different implementation for a vendor regardless of how its product complies with safety standards and certification.

Vendors must make sure that the SIS performs to the intended specification. Extensive testing ensures that all requirements are met, one of the biggest challenges in testing fault-tolerant control systems making certain that what the system built will perform as it was intended when something fails To address that concern companies have developed and implemented what is known as the Fault Insertion Process. The Printed Circuit Boards assemblies used can have up to 5,000 test points on a single board, each of which are tested under fault conditions in multiple modes of operation.

Few companies invest enough resources in developing quality processes and exhaustive validation and verification schemes such as Automated Fault Insertion Test Systems. In Automated Fault Insertion Test System the robotic testers efficiently apply up to 37,000 fault insertion tests on each board examined. Only one fault-tolerant control vendor performs automated testing to such a high degree of combined unit and system coverage. By testing every known failure mode users in the process industries are guaranteed an extremely robust hardware platform.

In addition to fault insertion, the hardware platform and software go through extensive Verification and Validation Process. Users in the process industries c-ount on this level of testing to prevent downtime and lower their total system lifecycle cost.