ISO 26262 – Functional Safety Standard

Overview

ISO 26262 is an internationally recognized functional safety standard for electrical or electronic systems. This standard is applicable throughout the automotive lifecycle for E/E systems related to safety. The standard also applies to the mechanical subsystem in the automotive segment and other embedded systems in any vehicle that includes driver safety assistance, propulsion, and control systems.

This safety standard addresses the possible safety risks that arise due to the malfunctioning of E/E systems. This standard consists of 12 parts covering the entire functional safety aspects of the product development.

Application

Vehicles are becoming increasingly intelligent each day and can even operate without the driver’s input. The vehicle transmission and other features are controlled electronically. While these features provide useful benefits to users, they also pose an equivalent safety risk. It is crucial to address these hardware and software hazards and system failures. Thus, the International Organization for Standardization realized the need for functional safety and created the ISO 26262 standard.

Functional Safety starts with the System, then flows down through ASIL levels and Safety Goals to Sub Systems, Hardware, Software, and Operations. ISO 26262 provides a framework to enable Safety Management for E/E as well as other technologies.

Benefits

Maintaining safety in the manufacturing and automotive industries is a serious concern. The goal of ISO 26262 standard is to ensure the functional safety of the road vehicles throughout the automotive lifecycle. Many companies have already understood this importance and have implemented the functional safety standard.

Safety-related hazardous risks are being assessed in order to avoid system or hardware failures and safety measures are defined to mitigate the failures. The standard covers the overall functional safety aspects of the development process and determines risk details like ASILs.