If you see functional safety (FuSa) as a necessary evil, it’s time to upgrade your perspective; this one’s obsolete.
FuSa is more than a mere obligation that could add complexity, time, and expense to your development process. It’s an opportunity. This blog post will show how simplifying FuSa can unlock new value in the automotive industry, enabling companies to innovate faster, reduce costs, and deliver safer, more reliable products to market.
When FuSa becomes a box-ticking exercise, it can lead to over-complicated processes that increase costs and slow development. It also invites the temptation to treat safety as nothing more than “documentation” done after the fact (even though that violates the intent of safety).
But it’s never just about documentation. ISO 26262 is predicated on critical thinking and complex problem solving, taking system engineering concepts as a baseline. Safety has always been part of vehicle/module development; ISO 26262 simply gave it uniformity.
As system complexity continues to grow in areas like electric vehicles (EVs) and autonomous driving, FuSa has more potential than ever to provide a competitive advantage. The key is simplifying how we develop and integrate safety into products.
Figure 1: Functional Safety is a Specialty of System Development
The idea of simplifying safety may seem counteractive to safety culture. However, simplification is not about cutting corners or ignoring crucial steps. It’s about efficiency and focus—finding smarter ways to meet functional safety goals without overengineering the process or the design. Here are a few ways to approach simplification:
Instead of reinventing the wheel for every project, companies can save time and resources by standardizing design elements across their portfolio. It is simpler to integrate modular, reusable safety sub-architectures such as hardware blocks, software libraries, and testing protocols that have already undergone rigorous safety testing across multiple platforms. Building on proven reliability drives consistent safety performance, helping to minimize repetitive testing and analysis.
Figure 2: Simple System of Systems Example
Not every component or sub-system in a safety-critical product needs to be built to meet the latest standards. There are many ways to utilizing quality managed designs with a well-documented history of performance can drastically cut down on development time while ensuring a robust system.
Manual testing of safety-critical designs can be one of the biggest bottlenecks in the FuSa lifecycle. Automation tools for verification, validation, and even fault injection testing can streamline the process, reduce human error, and free up engineering time for critical analysis.
Decomposition allows complex safety requirements to be broken down into more manageable parts. If you’re versed in the concept of a system-of-systems, you can split the functionality and allocate different SIL/ASIL levels to each part based on its criticality.
By isolating safety-critical functions and tailoring ASIL levels more precisely, decomposition not only simplifies development, but also enhances scalability because verified decompositions can be reused in future projects. This approach supports modular design (see point 1).
Functional safety should not be a “necessary evil.” It should be a catalyst for innovation, a driver of brand reputation, and even a strategy for growth. Here’s how.
Companies that can integrate safety faster into product development cycles will be positioned to release cutting-edge features ahead of competitors, especially in emerging spaces like autonomous vehicles and advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS).
Especially in industries like automotive, end users are becoming more aware and demanding of safety systems. Making FuSa a core strategy rather than an afterthought can help the complete supply chain build trust and brand loyalty with their customers.
Simplified, reusable safety components lower development costs, allowing businesses to allocate resources more strategically instead of pouring time and money into the same safety processes for every new project.
Safety is about creating systems that protect human lives. It’s time for engineers, product managers, and executives alike to rethink how they approach this essential component of product design. When done with a mindset of simplification and efficiency, safety is not only the right thing to do—it’s also the smart business decision.
Read more from the Automotive FuSa blog series
Are you looking for ways to simplify your functional safety development? Comment below, and our team will reach out to discuss how you can turn safety into a competitive advantage.
