Opinion - why Functional safety is difficult?

Functional safety

Functional safety is a hot issue in the automotive industry. A lot of engineers have ever heard about functional safety. they will agree that safety is most important after the event "unintended acceleration" of Toyota case. I heard that rising market engineers and managers are the focus on this and they try to recruit engineers who know Functional safety well in development phase.



Recently, QA parts need Functional safety engineer to maintain and trace their own E/E system in Europe and North America. Moreover, there is some movement that SOTIF(safety of the intended function) is going to be included in ISO26262 because Autonomous driving is the trend in the Automotive industry. you may know that the Functional safety engineers are not many in the industry.


 For example, in Korea, we can guess who is a move to somewhere because the pool is small, but demand is higher and higher. (Tier 2 and 3 suppliers even also try to recruit Functional safety manager and engineer.)


so many people try to be functional safety engineer or manager, but most of them give it up, why?

Process + technical knowledge + domain knowledge

many managers try to access functional safety as "Process". the step of the process is very similar to CMMI, and ISO26262 get many aspects from CMMI process.


so If you study ISO26262 and functional safety, you will feel like "oh it is almost same with CMMI "but when you try to do safety activity, for example, make technical safety requirements, you will feel "It is not easy."


 you will need the domain knowledge of vehicles, and you must know technical knowledge to make safety mechanism or to meet FTTI and so on. if you ask help to a consultant, they will tell you " we are providing what to do(process), not how to do(implementation)."




For theses reason, German automotive industry could lead Functional safety stream because they have a lot of experience and know-how "de facto".

Example: transmission control unit

If you do HARA, you may make safety goals. In the powertrain field, as you know, unintended action is going to be a major risk.


according to transmission domain, throttle valve opening ratio and vehicle speed are factors to shift. unintended action can occur in the transmission if unintended shifting has occurred.


then we can check 2 factors; the can signal of e-gas module and signals of speed sensor. and we check when they can make faults.


for example, speed sensor, the pulse is stuck, the pulse is off and the pulse makes unexpected signals. So, to reduce the hazard, we can apply the safety mechanism according to diagnostic coverages. also, we can think about this at the software level.


Therefore, if you want to do safety manager or engineer, you must know the domain knowledge of vehicle; how to drive or how to stop in vehicle level, and you must know the technical knowledge of control unit; how to reduce the fault, how to manage fault and so on.

So if you want to do a safety engineer or manager, you need to pay attention to technical knowledge and automotive system knowledge. Or, you will be really hard to do your responsibility as a safety engineer and manager.


if you have no chance to get knowledge about automotive system, then you can assume the risky situation and then, gon on next processes. (so called as SEOOC, also, refer to publications from several companies,  eg. semiconductor or supporters of automotive SW)





 I saw someone like this, so you must do your best to know how vehicles work, what could we do for reducing hazard and risk with technical knowledge.