ISO26262 FUNCTIONAL SAFETY ROLLOUT

In preparedness for the introduction of the 2nd Edition of ISO26262, a heavy vehicle OEM employed our expertise to assist them in overhauling their organisation and introducing new processes to achieve compliance.

Short of becoming an ‘extra overhead’, the processes associated with achieving Functional Safety can have tremendous benefits to the implementing organisation; engendering strict adherence to systems engineering principles and cross-functional co-operation.

Functional Safety does not stop or even start with engineering. Close working with the sales operation of the organisation is essential to elicit the end-user requirements of any feature and how these may impact the safety-criticality. Similarly, once a Functional Safety feature has been developed, safe assembly, use, maintenance and disposal must also be controlled through close co-operation with the manufacturing, user-publications, after-sales and service operations of the organisation.

We carried out a ‘root-and-branches’ analysis of the organisation to establish the challenges that would have to be overcome in order to achieve ISO26262 compliance. Once understood, we compiled a report including all of the required changes, a timing plan of how they could be implemented, and a presentation to explain to the business leaders the necessity and benefits of the ISO26262 rollout.

Some of the measures we recommended included;

Introduction of a Configuration Management process to control the variants and versions of feature that were fitted to different vehicles and ensure all possible combinations had been adequately tested together.

Introduction of an ISO15288 compliant Systems Engineering process and training for all systems engineers.

Better co-operation between the sales and engineering operations including a Requirements Capture process, with suitable training - thus reducing the number of productivity-sapping customer rework requests and associated opportunities for the introduction of faults.

New ‘feedback’ processes to capture fault reporting, solution development and rollout and recording of software levels in the field.

Not only did we identify the need for, suggest and design the new processes and tools, we actually developed solutions.

We introduced proper ISO15288 compliant Systems Engineering processes and document templates to create a sound technical foundation upon which the Functional Safety Analyses could be conducted. To ensure full understanding of the new processes and we designed and implemented a number of training courses on Systems Engineering, Requirements Capture and Functional Safety

To introduce the processes we developed a comprehensive training scheme, tailored to the needs of individual departments throughout the organisation.

we continue to support our client by acting as 'Functional Safety Manager'; preparing safety plans, performing compliance audits, overseeing their projects and providing guidance where required. This can often be a more cost effective solution for many OEMs than employing a dedicated individual.