ACTUATION
Deploying automation diagnostics for predictive safety management
Your existing automation assets can forewarn you of the impending disaster. Are you reaping the benefits of your investment?
By Vimal Ghumman- Director of Sales – Rotex, North America
When the need arises to forecast events with actionable precision, one of the best practices is accessing credible, dynamic asset information and the means to predict future failures with considerable accuracy. Predictive safety management is achieved by monitoring online devices and any shifts in key operating parameters that warn of potential safety issues. Risk mitigation, reduced downtime, and significant cost savings can be achieved by deploying predictive safety management. This must be viewed as a direct profit-impacting function by process owners and operators. Post-mishap findings report that only 35 % of the capability of automation equipment is utilised, and either the available asset data was never analysed or used as historical offline data. Mostly, the operating staff either bypassed most of the advanced features of state-of-the-art equipment or shut it off completely, defeating the very purpose of the tool. Unfortunate safety events can easily erode a bottom line and distract end users from their primary business focus, resulting in heavy fines and negative press.
Efficient asset management comes first
Efficient asset management is basic to implementing predictive safety management and can be broadly divided into primary and secondary assets. Primary assets are raw materials, physical equipment, and all forms of energy. These include vessels, piping, valves, and pumps other than the automation equipment. Secondary assets improve the efficiency of the plant’ s primary assets. These are the automation systems, information systems, human assets, distributed control systems( DCS), and programmable logic controllers( PLCs). Primary assets also include safety systems such as safety instrumented systems( SIS), human-machine interface systems( HMI), advanced process control, and multivariable predictive control( MPC). Production planning and scheduling, batch management, enterprise resource planning( ERP), customer relationship management( CRM), and supply chain management are other essential secondary assets. Additionally, robust operational excellence including human performance, control performance, asset performance and safety and environmental performance all need to be deployed prior to implementation of predictive safety management.
Common strategies for deployment
Once the basic measurement and controls are reliable, then technology can be applied with no additional capital outlay. As plants
14 Valve World December 2025 www. valve-world. net