Safety Automation Builder for Industrial Compliance
Find Innovative SolutionsGenerate Solutions
Solution Overview
Problem
Designing and documenting safety solutions for industrial automation systems is a complex and time-consuming process, requiring manual selection of safety devices and compliance with industry-specific safety standards, which can be challenging for designers lacking knowledge of these standards.
Innovation Solution
A safety automation builder tool that guides designers through identifying hazardous access points, selecting suitable safety devices, and generating documentation, including a risk assessment component, device selection tool, and export functionality for performance level verification, to automate the design and documentation of safety solutions in compliance with industrial safety standards.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Reliability
If manual selection and documentation of safety devices is performed, then compliance with safety standards can be achieved, but the design process becomes complicated and time-consuming
Solution Approach 1:
The software enables designers to independently complete safety system design and documentation without requiring expert knowledge of safety standards. The system automatically guides users through the design process, performs compliance verification, and generates required documentation, making the complex safety design process self-serviceable for ordinary designers.
Solution Approach 2:
The software pre-configures safety standard requirements and compliance criteria before the design process begins. By having safety standards and documentation templates prepared in advance, the system eliminates the need for designers to manually research and interpret safety standards during the design process, significantly reducing design time while ensuring compliance.
2Ease of manufacture
If manual selection of safety devices is performed, then specific safety functions can be implemented, but the process requires extensive knowledge of safety standards
Solution Approach 1:
The software acts as an intermediary between safety standards and designers. It translates complex safety standard requirements into user-friendly design guidelines and automatically verifies compliance, eliminating the need for designers to directly interpret and apply complex safety standard knowledge.
Solution Approach 2:
The system replaces the manual cognitive process of interpreting safety standards with automated software verification. The software automatically checks design configurations against safety standard requirements and generates compliance documentation, substituting human expert knowledge with automated computational verification.
3Loss of information
If comprehensive safety documentation is generated, then compliance verification is enabled, but manual data entry and documentation processes increase workload
Solution Approach 1:
The system automatically generates comprehensive compliance documentation from the safety system design data. It extracts relevant information, formats it according to safety standard requirements, and produces complete compliance packages without requiring manual data entry or compilation by designers.
Solution Approach 2:
The software merges the design process with the documentation generation process. By integrating compliance verification and documentation generation into the safety system design workflow, the system eliminates separate manual documentation steps and automatically produces compliance documentation as part of the design process.
Data Source
AI summary
A safety automation builder that assists in development of compliant safety functions for industrial safety systems is provided. The safety automation builder imports a system drawing or image of a user's manufacturing line, machine, or production area, and guides the user through a workflow that facilitates configuration of safety functions for each hazardous access point. The safety automation builder leverages a library of safety devices and encoded knowledge of industrial safety standards to guide the user toward selection of suitable safety devices for mitigating risks associated with the access points. Once configured, the safety automation builder can export the safety function data to an external verification system for confirmation that the configured safety functions comply with the prescribed industrial safety standards.