Further development of SISTEMA

Status:

completed 06/2016

Aims:

SISTEMA is a PC application developed by the IFA, originally in 2004. It is used for the evaluation of machine safety with reference to the ISO 13849-1 control standard. ISO 13849-1 has become a worldwide standard for machine controls, and a revised version was published at the end of 2015. The second part of this standard (Validation) was updated in 2012. In accordance with ISO 13849-1, ISO 13849-2 sets out the procedures to be followed and conditions to be met by analysis and testing during the validation process. According to an ISO survey, SISTEMA is used by approximately 70% to 80% of users of the standard (in 2016, 65,000 users were registered with the IFA) and is recommended by industry bodies, machine operators, manufacturers of safety equipment, and also service providers and test bodies. Owing to its widespread use in the machinery sector, SISTEMA was to be developed further in a suitable way by the IFA in consideration of new trends in technology and standards.

Activities/Methods:

Development was prepared by work in relevant VDMA and ISO working groups. The criteria to be met by Version 2.0 were agreed internally with the project launcher and relevant users. SISTEMA was first equipped for future requirements, and above all made more powerful, by updating of the development environment and the software components used. The normative changes in ISO 13849-1:2015 were incorporated, and also referenced more strongly to the content of Part 2 of ISO 13849. VDMA Technical Rule 66413, a harmonized data format for the reliability parameters of control components, has been defined by the German Engineering Federation (VDMA). An import interface for this format has been developed for SISTEMA. Additional data fields have been added to SISTEMA for this purpose. Numerous suggestions for improvements from users, standards developers and manufacturers were to be taken into account. The development steps were as follows: migration of SISTEMA to the latest development environment, Delphi XE5; updating of the software components used; adaptation of the SISTEMA data structure to VDMA Technical Rule 66413; development of a VDMA 66413 library manager and interfacing of it to SISTEMA; and implementation of changes arising through the third edition of ISO 13849-1:2015. Each milestone was followed by a new test phase.

Results:

The development targets were comfortably reached. A test version of SISTEMA 2.0 was presented in advance to providers of SISTEMA libraries and made available for a longer test phase. Following completion of development, SISTEMA 2.0 was published for all users. Release of the software is accompanied by talks and publications (including revision of all relevant SISTEMA cookbooks and the help file).

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