FSE-211: IEC 61508 – Functional Safety for Design & Development (Electrical, Mechanical, Software) Sept 15-18, 2025-Online Live- Half-Days

The IEC 61508 family is a performance-based set of standards for functional safety that are commonly applied to the design and development of devices used in automatic protection systems for robotics, industrial / machinery equipment, energy, medical devices, railway, mining, etc. applications.

This course provides an example new product development process for embedded system design which has proven to bring better products to market, at reduced cost, and with shorter time-to-market. This example process can meet 61508 requirements using electronics, microcomputers and mechanical components. Full Variability Language software requirements are described in a practical way.

To achieve market success and comply with 61508, smart electronic-mechanical devices must be designed to minimize systematic failures (design faults and documentation mistakes) and random failures of hardware/software based on probabilistic performance-based evaluation. The class describes how to accomplish this goal, traversing the development process from product conception to release for production. It covers the establishment of design goals, the use of functional safety (quality) management plans, evaluation of architecture design (DFMEA/DDMA), detailed design (FMEDA), derived safety requirements, integration / validation testing, safety manual documentation, and how to evaluate field failure data. FSE 211 stresses how to detect design deficiencies early in the process so that they can be corrected with minimal impact to cost and schedule. It also highlights how to document the results of the design process to make it easier to demonstrate 61508 compliance to a certification body.

Learning Objectives

•        Create a Functional Safety Management plan to manage project documentation, tasks, and deliverables

•        Create / Review Product Safety Requirements to ensure traceability and flow-down to detailed design tasks

•        Evaluate / Interpret Risk Analysis to set product design goals

•        Create / Evaluate Safety Requirement Specification (SRS)

•        Select and Justify Engineering Tools for use in the Product Development process

•        Perform / Evaluate Design at all levels: system architecture, subsystem, hardware & software module 

•        Perform / Evaluate DFMEA / DDMA studies, Interpret Results, and Update Design 

•        Perform / Evaluate FMEDA studies, Interpret Results, Document 61508 reliability parameters 

•        Define effective Integration and Validation test plans, Create / execute detailed test procedures

•        Perform Fault injection testing to confirm functionality, performance, and diagnostics

•        Evaluate Field Failure data to estimate performance accurately 

Who Should Attend:

Staff from organizations that develop new products/devices for Functional Safety applications:

•        Functional Safety Managers

•        Approvals Coordinators

•        Product Designer / Developers

•        Safety Engineers

•        Reliability Engineers

•        Device Architect Designer

•        Embedded System Development Engineers

Length: 2 days

This course will be held over 4 x 4-hour sessions on the following dates and times:

Estimated Time:  08:30am - 12:30pm EST

All sessions will need to be attended