Inherited plant, first year, nobody documented anything. We have a safety audit next month and one line on the auditor's list says "safety signature recorded in the validation file for each safety controller". Nobody here knows what that is.
Our line has a 1756-L72S with 1734 IB8S and OB8S modules. I went online with Studio 5000 v32 and found Controller Properties, Safety tab, and there's a long hex number with a date and time next to it, and a padlock icon.
I searched it and got a licensing page for something unrelated, and the maintenance manager reckons it's a password.
Is it a password, a licence, or something else, could someone explain, and what do I write down for the auditor, and who is supposed to sign it off?
Not a password, not a licence. Is the safety task locked, the padlock closed? And whoever put that line in left a commissioning report somewhere, they always do. Panel door pocket, or a binder in the office nobody opens. Look there before anything else.
Padlock is closed. Found a binder in the office, commissioning report from 2019 from the integrator, listing the 1756-L72S and the 1734-IB8S modules. There's a page called "Safety signature" with a hex number and a date on it. Same length as the one in the Safety tab, so I think that's probably it.
Neither. The signature is a checksum of the whole safety task plus a timestamp. Studio 5000 generates it on that tab and you lock the safety application with it in place, and it changes the moment anyone edits anything in the safety task. The point: if the number in the controller equals the number in the validation report, the logic running is the logic that was validated. If they differ, someone changed the safety task since, and it's unvalidated until it's re-tested and re-signed. TIA does the same job with the collective F-signature.
For the auditor: the ID, date and time from the Safety tab written into the validation file, next to the 2019 number. Signed by whoever is responsible for the machine's safety at your plant, not the auditor and not you.