Concept Development of a Consistently Traceable Process and System Solution for Ensuring the Requirements of Engineering and Functional Safety

Abstract

In times of digital transformation and the growing degree of automation and connectivity of machines, the product complexity increases. Due to the growing risk of misapplication, the early and consistent consideration of Functional Safety is becoming increasingly important with a growing share of electrical-electronical functions. How does the consideration of the reduction of dangers and risks in concept development could be improved by requirements engineering? The aim of this paper is not the expansion of theoretical understanding, instead, it focuses on important aspects of industrial implementation. Unlike theory, Functional Safety is not an integral part of the Requirements Engineering methodology in the evaluated company of the agricultural engineering sector. There are two separate approaches so that continuous traceability in the process is very difficult to ensure. If changes in requirements occur during the development process, which affects safety-relevant functions, the effects on Functional Safety may be ignored. This fact isn’t limited to the evaluated agricultural company, instead of this, it represents a cross-company and cross-industry problem. The project objective is the development of a concept for the integration of Functional Safety in the methodology of Requirements Engineering. To examine the research question if Model-Based Systems Engineering is a suitable approach for combining Requirements Engineering and Functional Safety, the RFLP structure is built on the example of a tire pressure control system. As a result, determined requirements, such as “bidirectional traceability”, “cross-disciplinary, function-oriented approach”, “possibility of linking requirements and architectures”, “reusability” and “possibility of clustering” are validated.