Functional safety (FuSa) - Risk reduction in accordance with ISO 26262 throughout the product life cycle

Are you developing software for electrical and/or electronic (E/E) systems for the automotive industry? In case you do, your product has to meet the requirements of ISO 26262.

What is the standard ISO 26262?

It is an adaption for the automotive industry of the broader DIN EN 61508 safety standard which is applicable to all technical systems containing software for electrical and/or electronic (E/E) systems ranging from nuclear power plants to chainsaws.

ISO 26262 is aimed to reduce risks associated with (E/E) systems to a level tolerated by society. The risk reduction has to be applied to every stage of the product lifecycle – from the start of the development to the production and even to maintanance and decomissioning.

Why is the automotive safety standard ISO 26262 important?

The system complexity continues to increase ever faster in the automotive industry. It becomes more and more difficult to guarantee a specific level of safety for the product to be introduced to the market. Working according to the ISO 26262 standard and getting an approval of compliance to the standard provides a number of benefits to you as an automotive manufacturer or supplier:

• You show that you are fulfilling your responsibilty and ensure the overall safety of your vehicle or system.
• You reduce the risk of your product to cause harm to persons to a generally accepted level.
• You avoid costly product recalls and image damage.
• You comply with the relevant international standard and thus have access to all markets around the world.

Assessments are part of the confirmation measures demanded by the ISO 26262 standard together with Safety Audits and confirmation reviews. Our experts work closely with your team to ensure that you meet the requirements of the standard.

Synspace and our partners in the Soqrates working group have developed a combined ASPICE and ISO 26262 Assessment model. You can either choose the combined assessment or just a functional safety assessment.

For the functional safety we assesses your product based on your development documentation and either an on-site or online assessment. The result will be documented in an assessment report explaining possible deviations or stating the Functional Safety compliance of your product. The assessment consists of:

• Assessment of processes, methods and tools:
  • Analysis of development and supporting processes,
  • Hazard analysis and risk assessment -ASIL classification
  • Planning documents such as DIA safety plan, project plan, safety case, etc.
  • Qualification and certification of software development tools

• Analysis of development processes:
  • Item definition, Safety Concept, HSI, Software- and Hardware specification,
  • Architecture and design (Technical Safety Concept and Software Architecture),
  • Testing and certification of System-, Software-, and Hardware level
  • Evaluation of Hardware by analysis of FMEA, FMEDA, FTA, etc.

Why should you choose Synspace to conduct your Functional Safety Assessment?

Synspace and his partners are functional safety experts with many years of experience in conducting assessments for OEMs, and Tier 1,2 suppliers.

Synspace is part of the Soqrates Working group conisting of Functional Safety experts from Industry and University. Results of the working group are regularly published at the world wide conference Eurospi and in Springer books. Synspace and its partners are members of the ECQA, a europe wide accredited independant training and certification body. Synspace and our partners have developed trainings and exams for functional safety managers and – engineers for ECQA.

Did you find out that the product you want to develop has to comply to the safety standard? Or do you want to move your business into supplying electronically controlled systems instead of „purely“ mechanical parts or systems but your team is lacking experience in this field? In this case it might make sense to chose an experienced partner who can either support your safety manager or gives you the choice to provide a safety manager who can take over full product responsibility for the safety.

For the safety management Synspace can help you to build the safety case helping with templates for all necessary documents and especially the safety plan. The safety plan will give your whole development an overview by providing a reverence in which the safety strategy for your product and all interfaces to your development processes are defined.

Synspace will identify the various roles and responsibilities as well as the demanded confirmation measures that are mandatory for the development process and the handover to the production. The Safety plan lists the various techniques and measures that will be implemented as part of the development project to ensure that the targeted ASIL is achieved.
By providing the safety manager, Synspace will manage your complete development for the safety part. The safety manager will take over the legal responsibility by signing the release recommendation for the product.
If you need help with the engineering processes system, hardware or software, SynSpace can provide the necessary expertise. SynSpace offers engineering and methodology expertise for all required methods such as FMEA, FTA, hazard and risk analysis. We support you in creating the functional safety concept and functional safety requirement specification on system, system integration, software, software architecture and hardware level.

SynSpace’s testing experts can additionally support you at all appropriate testing levels by writing validation test plans and test specifications and helping to implement test cases. All security requirements and tests are implemented in your documentation database.