Supporting qualification: Safety standard compliant process planning and monitoring

Functional safety of embedded systems has become an integral part in automotive engineering activities due to the forthcoming safety standard ISO 26262. One main challenge is to perform development activities compliant to the standard and provide the respective documentation. Traceability between requirements from a standard, as well as project-specific process and product artifacts throughout the entire development cycle allows compliance assessment to support qualification. This paper proposes a methodology to plan and monitor the safety development process. Using a formalized requirements library of the ISO 26262 as well as a system description and its safety integrity level, a standard compliant process model is derived describing all necessary steps in the development process. Based on this process model, the methodology allows monitoring process activities and their degree of implementation, based on standard compliant confirmation measures. The main benefit is the reduced effort in preparing qualification or certification of a new safety-critical product. The development of an Adaptive Cruise Control system is sketched as an example application to illustrate the proposed proceeding.