An Approach to Support FMEA Specification in Automotive Systems

ISO 26262 aims at providing guidelines to the automotive industry and its suppliers for managing functional safety in the early phases of the development of safety-critical automotive E/E systems. One of the recommendations of ISO 26262 is the identification of potential failures, their causes and possible effects. One of the most frequently employed means for performing this task is the conduction of Failure Mode and Effect Analysis - FMEA. Despite the widespread adoption of FMEA, our industrial experience has shown that a considerable number of software components are not considered in the analysis. As a result, the components not considered in the analysis might cause safety-critical consequences if they fail. To overcome this challenge, guidelines have been created to support safety engineers throughout FMEA activities, with the aim of ensuring proper consideration of all safety-critical components of the software architecture. These guidelines include rules that help to assure quality and sufficient level of analyses detail and therefore, it helps to prove that the system has the designed safety measures needed to ensure dependability.