1               General Information

On planning plants and putting them into service, you can define specifications for specific process flows or safety measures. You can define these specifications for cause and effect relations in a cause and effect table (Safety Matrix).

In a cause and effect table (C&E Table), you can specify which actions are to be taken if a specific cause occurs.

This allow you to do the following:

·            Definition of the causality for fault-tolerant control systems
To ensure the functional safety, you can define how many parallel, functionally identical devices must still function in the process before the overall system must be shut down.
Example: Two parallel valves are used in a process. If a voting 2oo2 (two out of two) is defined for this process in the C&E table, the process can still continue if one valve fails. The overall process is stopped only if both valves are defective. If the voting was defined to be 1oo2, the overall process would have to be stopped if one valve failed.

·            Definition of the causality in case of emergencies
To ensure safety in case of emergencies, you can define which actions are to be taken.
Example: In case of a warehouse fire, the fire department must be alerted, a fire alarm must be set off in the entire production area, the inflow of flammable production goods must be stopped, and so on.

·            Definition of the causality in the planning phase
In the table, you can define specifications for various process scenarios or operating modes.
Example: In the operating mode to create a liquid mixture, a vessel may only be filled to 80%. If this filling degree is exceeded (cause), an emergency valve must be opened (effect). However, in the cleaning process, the same vessel may be filled to 100%; in that case, the emergency valve must not be opened.