FuSa_Industrial Archive

ISO 13849 Safety of machinery – Software development

ISO 13849 Safety of machinery, describes the requirements for the functional safety of machines. The safety standards in the field of machinery are divided into Type A, Type B and Type C standards. ISO 13849 is a Type B standard. For machines that are covered by the scope of a Type C standard and that are designed and constructed in accordance with the requirements of this standard, the requirements of this Type C standard take precedence.

Like other Functional Safety Standards, ISO 13849 specifies various levels of criticality. The standard defines the performance levels (PL) a – e for this purpose. PL b and PL c correspond to SIL 1 according to IEC 61508 (high/continuous mode), PL d corresponds to SIL 2 and PL e corresponds to SIL 3. Read more

29. December 2019/by HEICON Global Engineering GmbH

Functional Safety Basic Standard IEC 61508

FuSa_Industrial

The Functional Safety Basic Standard IEC 61508 is often referred to as the mother of all functional safety standards. This standard was introduced in 1998 with the intention of defining cross-industry processes and methods to be used for safety-relevant electrical, electronic and programmable electronic systems. IEC61508 is applied if no industry-specific standards are available for this area. Read more

17. July 2018/by HEICON Global Engineering GmbH

IEC 61508 – Tool qualification – When? Why? How?

FuSa_Industrial

The term tool qualification triggers an unpleasant feeling and uncertainty in many people who deal with functional safety. IEC61508 requires the certification of software tools used for software development. Other functional safety standards also require similar measures. Unfortunately, however, the same terms are not always used. IEC61508 uses the term “certified tools”, often the term “qualified tools” or tool qualification is also used.

Besides the different terms, there are also very different, partly very individual, interpretations of what exactly is to be understood by the topic. The following article attempts to contribute to the clarification of open questions in this complex of topics. The following 3 questions will be answered:

Why do functional safety standards require the tool qualification?
What are the requirements of IEC61508?
How to deal with the topic in a meaningful way?

Specification Architecture Requirement in IEC 61508; Is there any difference?

FuSa_Industrial

Specification Architecture Requirement : For an increasing number of systems in the industrial automation functional safety requirements must be fulfilled. The IEC 61508 compliance must be demonstrated for the software development.
On the other hand, there are commercial requirements which often severely limit the product development budget.
The solution lies in an efficient development process that meets the safety-relevant requirements. A prerequisite for a successful implementation of such a process is a deep understanding of the standard and a clear definition of used terms. In the following blog, I discuss the three terms Specification Architecture Requirement. Read more

22. December 2016/1 Comment/by HEICON Global Engineering GmbH

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