
Safety Platforms
Efficiency for safety-critical system development
A widely accepted strategy to increase efficiency in the product development of safety-critical systems is:
Keep your team in the area of application-specific system development and look for a partner who builds a matching safety platform for you.
With Embedded Office, you will get a partner who follows the golden principles of cooperation:
- transparent communication with honest estimations
- project responsibility and requirements based decisions
- engaging employees supporting your ideas
We offer a solution, called a Safety Platform. Let's discover the 5 steps to your next Safety Platform:
Safety Concept
Avoid and master system faults
The risk of system faults increases with each additional feature. Functional safety management ensures that the occurrence of random and systematic failures is in an acceptable range.
Hardware aging, radiation, or attrition of components triggers random errors. There are limited possibilities in avoiding these kinds of errors. A safety-critical system needs to detect and master random errors. With software components, called hardware self-tests, the system monitors itself to detect exactly these random faults.
Systematic faults are introduced during the development of software and hardware. With an adequate development process, systematic faults are avoided. With our Safety Mentoring, you get assistance in establishing a development process with company matching, uniform, and reproducible procedures that cover the needs of safe system development.
Safety Concept
How to write a safety concept?
We can consult, guide, and support you in a close partnership to analyze your system and write the safety concept.
Best Practice
Which safety measures do I need?
When defining a particular situation's safety measures, we can help with our solid background in safety development.
Gap Analysis
How can I achieve a SIL afterward?
When you start without a safety concept, we can help your team with a Gap Analysis. It describes the activities or changes you need to get your wanted safety capability.
Specify Self-Tests
How do I choose the self-tests?
The diagnostic coverage of your system is the key. We can help you in specifying the right collection and timing of required self-tests.
Select Software
Reduce time-to-market
The complexity of new safety systems grows fast. The development phase is characterized by pressure in time and money. Therefore, the selection of the right software components as building blocks is essential.
In the beginning, the catalog of building blocks for safety products was limited to software components with the right safety capability. Today, we mostly want to re-use one or more software parts from the non-safe area.
We believe that the catalog of building blocks must contain all available software components (commercial and open-source). Therefore we need a strategy for separating safe vs. non-safe parts.
Hardware Separation
A dedicated small microcontroller running the small safety part of an application is the traditional way of separation.
During our service Safety Mentoring, we can help to choose a matching device from the safety perspective.
Software Separation
For microcontrollers including a hardware memory protection unit, it's possible to separate different safety capabilities on a single device.
We provide the real-time kernel Flexible Safety RTOS and the application framework Partitioning System for this kind of separation.
System Separation
For processors, providing support for virtual peripherals, it's efficient to separate complete operating systems with a hypervisor.
We offer a highly efficient type-0 hypervisor in the security system builder MOSA.ic for usage in safety and security products.
No Separation?
When all separation methods are not suitable for your product, it's possible to improve the safety capability of a software component.
With Component Tailoring, we can analyze and lift the safety capability of a software component to the required level.
Pre-certified Software Components
Simplify Component Usage
All pre-certified software components from Embedded Office have been assessed by independent authorities. This simplifies the usage in your safety product development because you receive a solid software component with a document, called Safety Manual.
The Safety Manual contains guidance for your development team to achieve the documented safety capability. The safety assessment considers the applicable standards for:
- Automotive - ISO 26262 up to ASIL D
- Industrial - IEC 61508 up to SIL 3
- Railway - EN 50128 up to SIL 4
- Medical - IEC 62304 up to Class C
Realtime Operating System
With the Flexible Safety RTOS, we provide a pre-certified real-time operating system for safety and security products. Its deterministic behavior is guaranteed, and the memory protection hardware unit is handled by the kernel to get the same interface on all architectures.
Safety Measures
Safety standards force the application to check the program execution flow, the runtime consumption, and the integrity of communication. We provide the Safety Addons hardware and RTOS independent component for exactly these requirements.
Time and Space Partitioning
For the aerospace market, the Partitioning System is a smart solution for separating multiple applications in time and space without virtualization. It is inspired by the ARINC653 phase scheduler. This component allows the usage of any microcontroller with a hardware memory protection unit.
Virtualization System
With MOSA.ic, we offer a virtualization solution with a minimal footprint for processors with a hardware virtualization unit for peripherals. This system is well prepared for safety and security systems in the automotive and aerospace market.
Define Platform
Integrate Software Components
A collection of software components makes no platform. We need to configure the software components and integrate them for a specific use case. Besides using our products, we are working with several Open Source projects, commercial competitors, and customer in-house components. Always forming the best safety platform for your needs.
Software Integration
Integrating multiple software components on new hardware platforms can result in a challenge. With our in-depth embedded knowledge, we can help with the Integration Service to improve the speed and quality of the integrated platform.
Matching Components
If a component from Embedded Office didn't match the requirement exactly, with the Component Tailoring we offer individual adjustments to avoid unnecessary trade-offs at the beginning of a project.
Bootloader Strategies
When you need to update software in the field, we can support you in developing a bootloader that fulfills your specific needs. In addition, we master several communication lines and security mechanisms.
Open-Source Handling
In the case of selecting open-source components, we provide technical integration into your product. Furthermore, regarding open-source licenses, we can help to avoid common pitfalls.
Pre-Certification
Lower Certification Effort
Assuming you want to use your safety platform in multiple products, another step for reducing your product's approval effort is the pre-certification of the complete integrated platform. With this path, you avoid the demonstration of fulfilling all involved safety manuals.
We perform the demonstration a single time to the authorities and provide a final safety manual with all remaining rules for the safe usage of the integrated safety platform.
Harmonizing Safety Manuals
When using multiple pre-certified components, you must consider all Safety Manuals. We can help you in harmonizing the Safety Manuals into a single source of guidance.
Documentation Service
You can use already existing in-house software components in safety projects, too. We can provide an efficient path for the pre-certification of such elements out of context.
Software Verification
All used components of a safety platform must fulfill your specific safety capabilities. We provide services for the required verification activities and needed analysis documents.
Assessment Handling
If you intend to use the resulting safety platform multiple times, it may be useful to achieve a pre-certification for the whole safety platform. We can prepare and manage the assessment with your chosen authority.
Long-Term Maintenance
Customer Focus
For success, your safety product needs to focus on customers. As a consequence, your product will grow with new features or adjustments over the years in production. Keeping your product safe and secure includes the maintenance of your safety platform.
Safety Monitoring
All used components of a safety product are subject to functional safety management. We can consult and guide you with our Safety Mentoring through safety monitoring, tracking, and regulatory needs.
Active Reporting
For all Embedded Office components, we perform obligatory functional safety management. We can provide a so-called Maintenance Report, which includes all detected problems, workarounds, and fixes.
Change Management
In case your safety platform should grow with new features or adjustments to new hardware platforms, you will receive all source files to perform these changes. We can consult and guide your team through the needed activities.
Team Workshops
To achieve the optimized usage of the safety platform in your project, we offer individual project workshops with your application development team. This kind of workshop treats to make the best fitting application architecture.
Customer References
Working together on a safety-critical product is a long-term decision. We are proud to look back to great partnerships with over 300 customers all over the world. Some of them purchased a building block, while others worked with us on their safety platform for the whole product generation.
Excellent technical mastery, trust, and adherence to deadlines.
A. Leclercq, Software Engineer, Liebherr Mining
As part of a concept study, the investigation of a technical risk was commissioned. The result of the study was fully in line with expectations. Thank you so much!
N. Warmers, Industrial Fire Solutions, Novar GmbH
We have chosen you because you are experts in the field of safety firmware and we work well with you.
A. Sofia, Software Engineer, Oculox
Contact Us
Let's talk about your safety-critical product requirements. We are happy to discuss a potential partnership for building your safety platform.