Emerson extends PlantWeb for smart safety management

Emerson Process Management reports that its new PlantWeb Smart SIS safety management architecture extends the innovations of its proven digital process automation architecture to enable safer process plants and facilities. Emerson adds that Smart SIS is the first solution to employ digital intelligence and diagnostics from sensor to logic solver to final control, and take an integrated complete-safety-loop approach. PlantWeb Smart SIS also offers automated safety-loop testing and other features that increase system availability, while reducing lifecycle costs and easing regulatory compliance.

Smart SIS is built from proven PlantWeb technologies, including intelligent field devices, predictive diagnostics, and digital communications, which are already demonstrating their value in thousands of mainstream process automation projects worldwide. For safety applications, Smart SIS provides assurance of a SIL3 approach that includes transmitters and valve controllers certified to IEC 61508 and SIL3-ratified safety systems.

Emerson professional safety personnel and services organizations help customers plan and implement Smart SIS solutions to comply with the new IEC 61511 safety standards. Expert services include assisting the customer with process hazard analysis and risk assessment, along with Smart SIS design, implementation, and commissioning.

Facilitated by PlantWeb technologies, Smart SIS solutions are easily integrated with main-stream, basic process control systems to enable facility-wide overview, while maintaining separa-tion of safety-critical elements as required by IEC standards. Safety data and alarms are presented on Emerson’s DeltaV operator interfaces, stored in its historians, and passed to the AMS Suite: Intelligent Device Manager for integrated documentation and management.

“The Smart SIS safety management solutions deliver the same ease of use and efficiencies for safety in process facilities as the proven PlantWeb architecture does for mainstream process automation,” says John Berra, Emerson Process Management’s president. “PlantWeb Smart SIS solutions use digital intelligence and automated proof testing, including partial valve stroking, to enable continuous and on-demand diagnosing of safety loop sensors, logic solvers and final control elements to ensure they perform on demand. The resulting high reliability of safety systems reduces the risk of plant trips, which keeps our customers up and running. At the same time, the approach minimizes costly and risky practices of ongoing manual proof tests.”

—Jim Montague, News Editor, Control Engineering, jmontague@reedbusiness.com

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