ProLytX: Increasing Functional Safety and Efficiency with Engineering IT Prowess

Functional Safety is the highest priority for any facility; this is usually achieved by following regulatory mandates and company-specific safety standards. The backbone of both is rigorous testing regimens. Functional Safety testing usually occurs on an annual, semiannual, or triennial basis and requires facilities to go off-line for a considerable amount of time, sometimes even weeks, for maintenance and testing. In some cases, single-unit outages can cost over a million dollars per day. Moreover, traditional testing processes are extremely rigorous and manual, riddled with redundancy, and subject to human error. The situation necessitates operators implement technology and automation to streamline testing and documentation.

Addressing this need in the marketplace is ProLytX. The company delivers a complete package of innovative solutions that includes engineering, IT, and consulting services. The company helps clients increase operational efficiency and functional safety through the automation and digitization of testing, processes, and documentation. "We offer a full range of services around Functional Safety—anything from safety systems engineering to hazard assessment reviews, document writing, maintenance activities, as well as our specialized validation services. Our core business focus is to leverage technology to reduce operating and maintenance costs without sacrificing safety," states Brian Bailey, Functional Safety Services Director, ProLytX. Along with this, the company's three core software packages, Test Drive, Loop Drive, and ProSMART, create optimized solutions to streamline workflows, enhance functional safety within organizations, and help with OSHA and IEC61511 compliance.

Test Drive is a cross-platform validation tool that helps clients generate and execute test procedures for FAT and existing commissioned systems with fully documented results and a concise audit trail. It is completely vendor-agnostic and compatible with most program logic controllers (PLCs). The solution eliminates human error and reduces testing time by almost 75 percent with a templated, data-driven approach. Moreover, its people-approved process allows for human expertise and oversight. This engineerdesigned user interface proves to be far superior to the multisystem, multi-document traditional testing methods and brings all actions into a single view.