Functional Safety

Functional safety focuses on the design and implementation of control systems and equipment that could be harmful. It is concerned with ensuring that machines, devices, and systems operate correctly and safely, without causing harm to people or the environment.

To ensure that systems and equipment are designed and implemented to meet functional safety requirements, there are a number of international standards and guidelines, such as the ISO 26262 for road vehicles and IEC 61508 for industrial control systems, that provide a framework for managing functional safety throughout the lifecycle of a system or product.

Why

Functional safety procedures are used to ensure that systems and equipment operate safely and reliably, without causing harm to people, the environment, or property. In many industries, such as automotive, aerospace, and process control, failures can have serious consequences, including injury, loss of life, and damage to equipment and infrastructure.

How

In practical terms, functional safety involves identifying potential hazards and risks associated with a system or piece of equipment, and then implementing measures to eliminate or mitigate those risks. This can involve a range of strategies, including the use of redundant components, fail-safe mechanisms, and safety-critical software.

Challenges

Functional safety according to the standards of today can be fundamentally difficult to achieve in emerging technologies like AI, machine learning or connected systems-of-systems. Safety Integrity work closely with researchers and take part in a number of research projects to find new state of the art solutions to ensure safety