Holiday Season, 2011- To all our customers, resellers, partners, vendors, learners, experts, developers, consultants and everybody who is associated with us, we wish a warm Season’s Greetings and a VERY HAPPY New Year 2012. The new year symbolizes twenty dozen (2012) so we wish you twenty dozens of best wishes for the year ahead. A sincere thank you to all for your support during this year and looking forward to the same enthusiasm, commitment, love and support during 2012 as well!

Mumbai, Nov 11- Abhisam Software today announced that the next batch of the TUV Certified Functional Safety Training Course will take place in February 2012 in Mumbai at the iconic tower, iThink Techno Campus of Aker Solutions, Kanjurmarg . The course is from 7th Feb 2012 to 10th Feb 2012. This is the third batch of the program until now in Mumbai. Faculty for this program too, will be the world renowned expert on Functional Safety and SIL, Dr. Michel Houtermans, from Risknowlogy Middle East.

This is a three and half day review course and is meant for those engineering and safety professionals who have at least 6 years of experience in industry. Education gives credits and a Bachelor’s degree gives two years and a Master’s three years. After three days of the intense review training, the participants will take the TUV written test (four hours) that will test understanding of various aspects of Functional safety in depth. All papers will be evaluated by TUV SÜD and successful candidates will get to use the title of Functional Safety Engineer, with a listing on the TUV SÜD website and a right to use the TUV logo on their business cards!

Topics covered will include the entire gamut of Functional Safety such as SIL study, risk assessment techniques, SIL verification and validation, Functional Safety standards such as  IEC 61508, and IEC 61511,  compliance, SIL certification, Safety Instrumented Systems, hardware and software system constraints and much more.

Update

So sign up now, as the seats are already half full within hours of the announcement!  This is an excellent course to have and the title of FSEng will be a great boost to your career as nowadays many companies and clients insist that the people who do work related to Functional Safety, should be adequately qualified.

Mumbai, Sep 26- Today the training program, Basics of Functional Safety and SIL was held at Hotel Kohinoor Continental, Andheri, Mumbai which was a great success! Attended by several senior professionals from diverse sectors such as Engineering Consultants, End User industries, Instrumentation manufacturers and independent safety professionals, this training program was a universal success, with all participants being happy about their experience.

The training was organized by Abhisam Software’s India team and the trainer was none other than the world’s leading expert on Functional Safety and SIL, Dr. Michel Houtermans, Managing Partner of Risknowlogy GmbH. Speaking on the occasion, Dr. Houtermans said  ” I am glad that people in India are so interested in Functional Safety and SIL. India is a growing economy and as plants, equipment and even facilities such as buildings, become more and more automated, functional safety will be very important in the coming years”.

A section of the participants in the SIL training program

Says one of the training program participants “Dr. Houtermans is very knowledgeable about the subject and I was very happy to get all my queries answered. There is a lot of information gap regarding the concept of SIL, how to certify instruments and products to SIL and the IEC standards and Dr. Houtermans provided clear answers to all my questions.”

Says Mandar Phadke, CEO, Abhisam Software about the program “We had a lot of requests from various people to do such a program. This is a very good beginning for those either new to Functional Safety or to those who are interested in getting an overall view of the subject such as local Instrumentation vendors, who want to get their local products certified as being SIL compliant.”

The program aimed at answering the following questions.

• What is Functional Safety?
• What is Safety Integrity Level? How does it affect me, my job, my products and my company?
• Why do my customers ask for SIL certification?
• Do the standards IEC 61508 and IEC 61511 apply to me? (to my products or industry)
• Customers want SIL compliance, why? How do we achieve it for them?
• What is a SIL study? What is a SIL assessment?
• What do we mean by terms like SIL verification and SIL validation?
• How do I get my products SIL certified?

At the end of the program, Mandar Phadke  and Dr. Houtermans,  distributed certificates to the participants. For more information about this program please contact us.

Sep 1, 2011- Mumbai – Abhisam Software is pleased to announce a one day introductory program on Functional Safety (including SIL), in Mumbai on 26th Sep 2011 at Hotel Kohinoor Continental, Andheri, Mumbai (near the International Airport). The enrollments for this program have already started and you can reserve your seat now by calling  us on +91 22 21732956 or +91 7208060349 now! Or send us an email to sil@abhisam.com

This much awaited training program introduces the participant to Functional Safety including topics such as Safety Integrity Level (SIL for short),  various risk assessment techniques, Safety Instrumented Systems, globally used standards on Functional Safety such as IEC 61508 and IEC 61511.  So if you are new to the concepts of functional safety and wish to know about SIL, this is an ideal training course for you.

The course will discuss functional safety for any kind of safety systems from a lifecylce point of view. The course will addresses the following topics:

• Introduction to SIL and functional safety
• The role of functional safety management
• Hazard and risk analysis as basis for SIL
• SIL Hardware  concepts
• The importance of reliability analysis
• SIL Software concepts
• SIL Certification-what it means?
• How to get your instruments/products SIL certified?

If you are from a process industry such as  Oil and Gas, Chemical, Petrochemical, Power, Agrochemicals, Rubber, Mining, etc then this course will be extremely useful. Ditto if you are an engineering consultant to any of these industries, or an automation system supplier (or system integrator) or a supplier of instrumentation to these industries or a government or regulatory authority.

These days, due to stringent government regulations and environmental awareness,  most well managed companies in the process industries have to implement good safety engineering practices such as analysis of Safety Integrity Level, use of appropriate Safety Instrumented Systems, the adherence to global standards such as IEC 61508 and IEC 61511 and ensuring that their staff who are entrusted with these tasks are well trained. This is an opportunity for engineers and technicians who are working in areas of process instrumentation to learn about this highly important subject from one of the foremost authorities on it, Dr. Michel Houtermans. Thus this event is a chance to not only learn all about Functional Safety, but also to network with Dr. Houtermans.

Dr. Houtermans will be in Mumbai to conduct this Introduction to Functional Safety training program, as well as to conduct the TUV Certified Functional Safety Training course to be held at the same location from 28th Sep 2011 to 1st Oct 2011.

So do not miss this chance. The fee is a very nominal Rs. 6500/- only that covers the cost of the training and lunch/tea/cookies for the participants. The networking and experience sharing is of course, complimentary!

Send your nominations to sil@abhisam.com or Call us on +91 7208060349 or +91-22-21732956 to register!

Aug 13, 2010-Miami,FL At last now, finally, of all people, Bill Gates finally “gets” it. I’m talking about his 2010 annual letter from Bill Gates, where he emphasizes the importance of “online learning”. He also says that most universities and other educational institutions do it the wrong way and have not really caught on to the Real McCoy  of e-learning. They simply upload a video of a professor droning monotonously in a classroom to his students and upload it to their site (or to YouTube). The only effect it has on the web is that it may put off a large number of students-in a classroom only a few may be put off (or go to sleep).

However, this can  hardly be described as e-learning. A real e-learning course will have not only video but also a lot of interactivity using Flash animations and other simulations, multiple paths through which learners can proceed, the ability to set your own pace and so on. This is really helpful as it interests the learner and does not saddle him/her with information that is irrelevant. When I mentioned this to people on another forum, I was told that there is a lot of questions and answers back and forth in a classroom environment, which is not possible online. While some of it may be true, it can be easily corrected by collating all these questions and doubts and their answers and weaving it into the learning course. This will keep on making the elearning course better and better and at some point of time be much better than the best professor who teaches the subject.

Now comes the best part of the story so far. Let us imagine this ideal best professor to teach a particular subject, say Ststistics, is Mr. Smith at Harvard (just for an example) and the second best is his junior teaching assistant Ms.Jane. Their expertise in teaching statistics, plus their experience of students’ doubts, questions and arguments has led to the preparation of an excellent course. Now imagine that into this course design are added various animations, simulation exercises, examples from industry and business experts to form a formidable e-learning course. This course is now much better than the sum of its parts, so it is a degree of magnitude better than what Prof. Smith or Lecturer Jane would teach. Now this same course is made available online to 100,000 students worldwide- see the effects? Mindboggling.

This is what he meant by “the future of learning is e-learning”. This is exactly what we at Abhisam Software have been saying for years together but nobody seemed to notice. But I am happy that since good ol’ Bill “gets” it, everybody else will, sooner or later.

Why is this threatening to a lot of the “powers that be”? Because now you need not pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to go to an “elite” university to learn the above Statistics course. You can learn it at home for a few hundred dollars or a few thousand dollars. For anybody and everybody. You need not be “accepted” at a premier school. You need not “demonstrate your innate genius” to get inside the elite school for an opportunity to learn. In fact you need not step out of your home to learn. Or if you wish you could loll on a beach and get access to the same course. You can take it at your own pace. No need to take on endless student loans. No need to appeal to past teachers to get good letters of recommendation. No need to… I’ll stop here. You get the idea? E-learning is truly liberating, an idea which has come.

Obviously some elements would want to prevent this from happening. But the genie is out of the bottle and cannot be brought back.

Our own e-learning courses are priced to be very very affordable to learners in all parts of the world. For example the subject of Safety Instrumented Systems is taught by a few elite in classroom type classes a few times a year for as much as $3000. But you can get the same knowledge, when you take our e-learning version for just $199 (now being offered at a special of $177). This benefits everybody, including the subject matter experts who have contributed to this course as well as the learners.

Comments are welcome below.

June 07,2010-If you are a customer of Abhisam Software, having brought our excellent  e-learning courses on Hazardous Area Instrumentation or Gas Monitors, then you are eligible for a whopping 20% discount off the current price of the Safety Instrumented Systems e-learning course. If you are interested, get in touch with us at sales@abhisam.com to get your own COUPON CODE to avail this discount. But you have to hurry up as this offer is not going to last long!

The Safety Instrumented Systems e-learning course is a big hit, with many practising engineers downloading the course. This comes as no surprise, as this is the only comprehensive e-learning course that covers all aspects of this slightly difficult to grasp subject. The course covers everything including Safety Integrity Level (SIL) calculations, SIL verification, functional safety, an introduction to safety standards such as IEC 61508 and IEC 61511 and  functional safety concepts. The cost is a real no brainer, if you compare with classroom courses that charge about TEN times as much for the same course.

The Practical Guide to Hazardous Area Classification (which should be really named as “The popular e-book on Hazardous Area Classification”) is now available in the DNL format. This format is far superior to an ordinary pdf, as the book is now visually rich with a “page turn” kind of look and feel. It seems that you are reading a physical book on a PC.

Furthermore, you can see the free preview of the Practical Guide to Hazardous Area Classification here and see for yourself how cool it looks. Note that the information inside is pure gold to those who are not sure how they should be classifying their hazardous areas. There has been no change in the content, but the presentation is much better, rather than the older pdf.

Welcome to the Abhisam Software blog!

This is our first post and we hope to post most of our articles, automation technology white papers, e-learning and training videos  and other information related to e-learning courses, developments in automation and other issues here.  The next post will be related to the importance of e-learning as a method of training in today’s economy.

Watch this space!

Comments, when they relate to the subject matter, are always welcome ! Other irrelevant comments will be promptly deleted.