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Brose’s “product line approach” of ISO 26262

In the opinion of Dr. Pierre Metz, Organisational Safety Manager at Brose

Fahrzeugteile, the greatest challenge is in the practical interpretation of

ISO 26262. The collaboration of OEMs and Tier1 requires the understanding

that functional safety needs a “systemic view” of the product.

IQPC: Since when has your company been involved with the ISO 26262

implementation? What does it mean for your constant and ongoing ISO

26262 implementation process?

Dr. Pierre Metz: Brose Fahrzeugteile has started using

IEC 61508 in 2007 and adopted ISO 26262 in 2010. For

us, ISO 26262 is another source of process, method, and

product requirements that we incorporate in our

standard process definitions for mechatronical systems,

and in our internal in standard requirements

specifications. We highly emphasize a pragmatic and

down-to-earth interpretation of the content. We also

embrace the exchanging of ideas and experiences with

the community, e.g. by participating in boards and

conferences.

IQPC: What major challenges is the industry facing at the moment in the

ISO 26262 implementation and what does it mean for your company?

P.M.: From our perspective the greatest challenge is in the practical interpretation

of ISO 26262. This standard is new to the automotive industry, so is the entire

topic of functional safety (even though that IEC 61508 was the applicable standard

before). This means that the experience with ISO 26262 is still rather low.

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------------- IQPC GmbH | Friedrichstr. 94 | D-10117 Berlin, Germany

t: +49 (0) 30 2091 3330 | f: +49 (0) 30 2091 3263 | e: eq@iqpc.de | w: www.iqpc.de

Visit IQPC for a portfolio of topic-related events, congresses, seminars and conferences: www.iqpc.de

IQPC: With regard to the ISO 26262 implementation, process

transparency, improved analysis techniques, clear responsibilities and

assessments as well as audits are often named as the key challenges. How

do you contribute to overcome these challenges?

P.M.: We overcome those challenges by employing a „product line approach‟,

mature processes, and by independent process adherence monitoring. See

conference paper.

IQPC: If OEMs and Tier1 work closer together to support a quick ISO

26262 implementation, how can they improve their collaboration?

P.M.: …by making themselves aware that functional safety requires a “systemic

view” on the product meaning that OEM and Tierx need to develop requirements,

safety concepts, system and component design jointly to a considerable extent, i.e.

it is no longer possible to “just define interface agreements and then working on

their own”.

IQPC: Do you have specific ideas to reduce the cost of ISO 26262

implementation?

P.M.: According to our experience, a meaningful approach to limiting the costs of

introducing any new standard that contains product-oriented and process-oriented

requirements is to actually embed those into the given processes but not to

establish “just another process topic” in isolation. Also, we are striving for truly re-

useable strategies such as documented standard requirements and standard safety

architectures with established traceability links in between. Still, a large degree of

automated workflow steps, i.e. model-based code generation and automated

testing, as well as investing in the team‟s qualification & training should pay back.

Want to know more about the implementation of ISO26262? Check out our Download Centre, where you will find more articles,

white papers and interviews regarding this topic:

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