Functional Safety

Functional Safety — product development according to IEC 61508

Product reliability and functional safety are crucial factors if you want to stay competitive. IEC 61508 always provides you with the opportunity to achieve functional safety in any hardware and software development. However, the challenges with development methods and implementation are considerable.

• To avoid accidents and damages when devices malfunction occur
• Highest level of Safety for human being, machines and environment

Reliable and safe industrial products are getting more and more important. In past, the safety related functions have been realized mostly by electronic components, housings, connectors etc. This is specified in the standards of EN, CE, Atex 100.

The software part grows accordingly with the intelligence of the products and today the industry needs to qualify software. So IEC 61508 takes into account of the elements of previous standards in the safety area and is therefore applicable to any development regardless of the field of operation, application and usecases. The development according IEC 61508 is also possible for non-safety related products.

The strength of the IEC 61508 is the complete view over the whole life cycle of the product, the consequent application of the development model for the devices and also for the installations.

The main benefits for the these products are increased reliability and MTBF, profitable efficiency, longer product life cycle, less cost of ownership, high quality product and … more profit for both device manufacturer and end-user.

Read more about our Safety-Certificates »

Our development services

The IEC 61508 challenges considerably the methodology of development and the implementation of electronic hardware and software.

• Complete product development to IEC 61508, IEC 61010-1, NE 79
• SIL1-3: Standards-based concept and development of hardware and software
• Implementation of secure communication for secure field bus systems
• PC software for parameterization and diagnosis of functionally safe devices
• Tool-supported realization of hardware and software
• FMEDA – Failure Modes, Effects and Diagnostic Coverage Analysis.
• Project consulting and cooperation with certification authorities (incl. BIA, TÜV), servicing branch offices
• Help with issue of certification-relevant documents
• Workshops

Faster to market with Safety Design Packages

Thanks to our many years of experience in the field of product development, we have developed Safety Design Packages for the area of functional safety. This is a comprehensive collection of reusable, proven circuits and software components that we have already successfully implemented in customer projects. The collection currently consists of 120 reusable artifacts that provide developers of safety components with an efficient basis for their projects.

Our Safety Design Packages were developed in accordance with the requirements of IEC 61508 and can be seamlessly integrated into a V-model-based project structure. For areas such as Safe Industrial Communication, Safe Microcontroller Cores, Safe Power Supplies, Redundant Input and Output Systems, Safe Encoder Interfaces and Safe Drive Functions such as Safe Stop or Safe Speed Monitoring, we have already coordinated Safety Design Packages with logically grouped artifacts for specific safety product groups.

You can find out more about the development of customized solutions for your individual requirements under MESCO Design Packages.