MESCO Engineering Group
DE
EN
DE
Series of articles: Product lifecycle management – but how!? (7)
With our product life cycle management publications, we would like to inform you about standards and regulations. Especially, we focus on SMEs to help them with functional safety issues.
Part 7 asks what the topics are that IEC 61508-1 defines for the component manufacturer in the first place.
Functional Safety Management according to IEC 61508-1
In the previous article, we presented the system FMEA as a method for identification of diagnostic measures to detect and control errors during operation in the context of functionally safe production development. This primarily concerns the random hardware failures. If we now consider the real failures in the field, then we would see that they can often be traced back to systematic causes. Consequently, Part 1 of IEC 61508 comprehensively defines Functional Safety Management (FSM) as an extension of the ISO 9001 quality management system.
This article in the series also focuses on the perspective of the manufacturer of a safe component. This primarily restricts the part of the safety lifecycle to be considered to phases 9 and 10.
As already emphasised: The standard is generic and is supposed to be applicable for a wide range of market segments. This hampers the readability, and a relevant and practical interpretation for the respective areas of application must be ensured.
Article issued in SPS Magazine