Continuous Assessment of Designs and Re-Use in Model-Based Safety Analysis

Abstract

To deliver complex functionalities in a cost effective manner, distributed manufacturing systems should ideally be based on standard interoperable components and be flexible and easily extensible. At the same time, systems must be demonstrably safe and reliable. In this paper, we argue that to balance these conflicting demands effective safety analysis techniques are required that partly automate and simplify off-line safety assessment. We outline a technique that automates the construction of fault trees and FMEAs and explain how this technique can be repeatedly applied in the course of the design life-cycle on functional and architectural models to enable continuous assessment of evolving designs. Finally, we discuss the issue of re-use of safety analyses and give examples of how such reuse simplifies the assessment.

Combining different binary decision diagram techniques for solving models with multiple failure states

“…Papadopoulos et al [10] present a model also using the information flow and several failure modes of basic components such as omission faults or detected faults. It is especially well suited to describe the communication process in safety critical environments.…”

Manufacturing plant control: Challenges and issues

“…Meanwhile, the usual fault-forecasting methods must also be improved to cope with the complexity of today's manufacturing systems. Papadopoulos et al (2005) outline a technique that automates the construction of fault trees and FMECAs and explains how this technique can be repeatedly applied to functional and architectural models to enable continuous assessment of evolving designs; this technique is well suited to manufacturing systems based on standard interoperable components and allows reuse of safety analyses. An improvement of FTA, named deductive cause-consequence analysis (DCCA), is presented in Ortmeier et al (2005).…”