SOTIF HARA and FMEA: Approach, Differences, and Synergistic Intersections

Ms. Dipl.-Ing. Silke Wieking-Treml (Bertrandt Group) will speak on this topic at the 19th FMEA Forum in Osnabrück on March 6, 2024, in Osnabrück. She provides an insight with this guest contribution in our FMEA blog. Not all risk analysis are the same, even if many normative regulations, especially in the automotive environment, require one. Currently, with the increase in development activities in the field of autonomous driving, new standards are being launched and also require a risk consideration at the beginning of the development of safety systems. It is often mistakenly assumed that an FMEA - which has been known worldwide since the early 20th century - can be used synonymously for the term risk analysis. We clear up this mindset using an example of the SOTIF standard.

Challenge / Task (Why)

Especially in the automotive environment in the course of semi-/autonomous driving, the number of regulatory standards in the areas of QM, Safety, and Security is growing. They must be controlled and complied with promptly alongside the technical design of a safety system. Looking at each standard individually with tunnel vision can overrun the daily work of a developer of such a system and lead to duplicate work for the sake of satisfying standards. The art is now to identify the overlaps of these standards in order to offer efficient integration of these in the design of safety systems.

Objective

Projects can thus be tailored with as little effort as possible and the requirements of relevant standards and norms can be identified and met in a tailor-made manner.

Technical Content (What and How)

Bertrandt stands with around 14,000 employees and over 50 locations in Europe, Asia, North America, and Africa as an independent and international engineering service company for cross-industry know-how and holistic system and product understanding. In the automotive environment, the competencies of the group are divided across locations into the four divisions Electronics, Product Engineering, Physical, and Production & After Sales.

Safety & Security is a topic that moves the Product Engineering division in their daily work. In our pilot phase, we evaluated the potential of the idea, identified and validated the benefit of our solution, and were able to confirm this. We further analyze the market, identified important stakeholders, and worked on a user-friendly tool version. The solution is oriented towards the needs of our customers in order to make the complex topic manageable for them.

We are convinced that the overlap analysis with a tool-based approach will be an innovative solution for the challenges in dealing with regulatory standards in the automotive sector.

You can learn more at the 19th FMEA Forum in Osnabrück on March 6 and 7, 2024, in Osnabrück. The FMEA Forum in Osnabrück will also be broadcast as a live stream in German and English. Register now to not miss any of the exciting lectures. Here you can find out more!