The use of the HIMA Smart Safety Test in BASF's new construction project in China is intended to save time and increase the efficiency of the tests. The project shows how well cooperation between plant operators and manufacturers can work. This is particularly important in the safety sector.
BASF's Zhanjiang Verbund Site Project (ZVSP) in China requires a great deal of personnel and time for testing, especially for Factory Acceptance Tests (FAT), Integration Factory Acceptance Tests (IFAT) and loop tests. In order to reduce the high cost of these tests, BASF decided to introduce the HIMA Smart Safety Test. The engineering, diagnostic and test tool is part of HIMA's SILworX, which is designed to enable a flexible, automated test process and cover the entire life cycle of a safety system.
Challenges with the manual tests
Initially, FAT and IFAT were carried out manually for the first system sections. The high complexity of the functions to be tested and the long test times showed that a new approach was required to achieve the project objectives on time. For this reason, BASF decided to automate the tests in China for future sections with the HIMA Smart Safety Test.
Advantages of the Smart Safety Test
The HIMA Smart Safety Test is not only designed for automated test execution, but also for the generation of test certificates and their documentation.The introduction of this automated solution can save time and increase test quality and accuracy by detecting and correcting minor errors at an early stage.
Close cooperation to optimize safety testing
BASF and HIMA worked closely together to develop a new concept for the testing and verification of safety functions.This made it possible to meet the safety requirements of the project and at the same time minimize the effort for future tests.The result should be an optimized test quality and a more efficient implementation of the security functions.
Peter Sieber, Vice President Strategic Marketing of the HIMA Group, commented: “This project is an excellent example of how close collaboration between user and solution provider can generate added value over the entire safety lifecycle. It is also proof of HIMA's commitment to helping customers make the complexity of functional safety manageable.”
The teams are currently working on a concept for the upcoming loop tests, which should reduce the effort required for repeat tests during system operation.
