Functional Safety IEC61508 Product Certification
Functionally – a good start!
June 2008 was a busy month for TestSafe – we hosted the Functional Safety course intended for manufacturers of electronic equipment.
To provide a brief background – Functional Safety is part of risk reduction process. If there is a manufacturing process where a failure could cause damage, injury or loss of life, then such a process would be examined for the hazards, their likelihood, consequences, and hence establish a risk level.
If the risk level is not acceptable, then further safety measures are required. These may be mechanical or based on automated electronic instruments.
Where electronic instruments are used, their failure mode and failure rate need to be evaluated. These failure modes may be due to reliability issues or design issues. The Functional Safety course held in June 2008 dealt with these issues in detail.
A group of 35 attended the three day course. We had equipment hardware designers, software/firmware developers, users and those that would be assessing and certifying such equipment in the future.
At the end of the course, just about everyone agreed that the course presenter, Dr Bill Goble, from Exida in United States, established an excellent rapport due to his depth of knowledge and experience. He freely answered questions from the group, and added several personal experience stories that peppered the technical course content exceedingly well.
TestSafe Australia is now poised to develop an agreement with Exida to provide their clients assessment and testing of electronic equipment to be used in Functional Safety systems. The agreement will allow TestSafe to operate in the entire Australia and may be parts of the Asia-Pacific region too. We will initially assess the case, consult on the hardware design and the software development process, and then prepare the safety case. This case will then be assessed by an independent agency that will lead to the award of the Type Certificate.
Another outcome of the course was getting together an informal group who will be openly discussing technical and other issues on the application of the Functional Safety.
Lots of work ahead. But a good start indeed!
For further information contact Mr Ajay Maira, TestSafe Australia (02) 4724 4922 or Email: ajay.maira@workcover.nsw.gov.au
