Functional safety explained
Functional safety lets you put electronics in charge of critical functions and still trust the result. The system behaves safely, or moves to a safe state, when something goes wrong.
More than compliance
Functional safety is state of the art for electronic products and an important part of your product liability. In automotive the applicable standard is ISO 26262:2018, derived from the generic IEC 61508, which is the basis of functional safety in industrial applications.
Trust
Your customers can rely on the product doing the right thing, even when a component fails.
Market access
OEMs and industrial customers expect evidence of compliance before they release a product.
Lower liability risk
A documented safety argument shows diligence and avoids costly surprises late in development.
Two failure types, two strategies
Controlled by process compliance
Mistakes in specification, design, implementation or tools cannot be handled by statistics. They are controlled through a rigorous, documented lifecycle with requirements traceability, reviews, verification and validation, scaled to the required integrity level (ASIL in automotive, SIL in industry).
Managed by safety mechanisms
Bit flips or broken connections happen unpredictably in operation. Diagnostics, redundancy, monitoring and error detection find the fault and bring the system to a safe state. Their effectiveness is quantified with hardware architectural metrics and failure rates.
Your evidence in one argument
The safety case is a structured argument, backed by evidence, that your product is acceptably safe for its intended use. Assessors and customers use it to decide on release for production, OEMs and Tier-1 suppliers build their own safety arguments on it, and it shows your diligence if questions come up after launch.
What a safety case typically contains
- Safety goals from the hazard analysis
- Safety concept and safety requirements
- Results of safety analyses (FMEA, FTA, FMEDA)
- Verification and validation reports
- Confirmation measures and audit results
- Proof of process compliance
Ready to talk about your safety case?
Email safetyba@safetyba.com or call +421 944 237 841.