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The demands of the safety critical systems
market are becoming ever more exacting, with
international standards being increasingly used
to demonstrate compliance with legal
requirements and the increasing need to justify
that the required functional safety has been
achieved. This is not surprising given the
increasing dependence on such systems to
achieve the specified tolerable risk targets. With
increasing contractual rigour and the potential
for litigation should something go wrong,
organizations need to demonstrate that
their functional safety capability is seen as
best in class.
Of particular importance in this context is the
effectiveness of the competence management
arrangements to ensure that those within the
organization having responsibility for functional
safety are competent to undertake those duties.
In order to meet these increasing demands,
safety suppliers and integrators are increasingly
embarking on more formalized regimes,
including certification programmes, to
ensure their safety applications are
implemented in accordance with IEC61508 [1]
and IEC61511 [2].
The author has worked with a number of
organizations seeking certification. This
Functional Safety Handbook
provides a case
study illustrating how a major automation
system supplier (the organization), with world
wide systems integration businesses (the
integrators) undertook the challenge to achieve
third-party accredited certification for its
functional safety management system (FSMS)
against the requirements of IEC 61508 and
IEC 61511.
The generic methodology described and
comprising the procedures and processes to
achieve certification have been developed by
ABB Ltd.
1.0 INTRODUCTION