The modern consumer demands an error-free service, be it in any industry. Any slight inconvenience can cost you a valued customer to a competitor. To ensure your system functions properly and mitigates the risk of malfunction or error, you must have System Safety Engineering (SSE).
Maintaining your system’s safety doesn’t require adding extra protective features. It simply means implementing safety protocols during system development to prevent mishaps and failures.
Let us give you an insight into how System Safety Engineering and management can safeguard your business. We’ll cover the entire process of how SSE works and why your business needs it in the modern context.
An Overview of System Safety Engineering (SSE)
System Safety Engineering (SSE) is the cornerstone of ensuring the safety and risk mitigation across a system’s entire lifecycle. It involves identifying, analyzing, and mitigating hazards within a system to ensure its smooth operation over its useful life.
SSE comprises technical expertise, engineering processes, and safety protocols that work simultaneously to lower the probability of a system failure.
A vast array of industries today use SSE to avoid system failures that can cause humongous impacts on the business as well as brand image.
Here are some industries that opt for SSE and risk assessment:
- Aerospace
- Automotive
- Utilities
- Pharmaceuticals
- Defense
- Medical Devices
- Nuclear Energy
- Autonomous Transportation
How System Safety Engineering Prevents Major Failures
In simple terms, SSE is about identifying the risk, following a protocol to eliminate it, and ensuring it doesn’t recur. To explain this in detail, here is a structured flow of how engineered safety solutions prevent errors before they escalate.
- Analysing the System Safety Approach
The first step is to establish the safety parameters for the system by factoring in the objective of the product/service, roles, criteria, and overall engineering processes. This step involves drafting a system safety plan that outlines the:
- Designated use of the system and perceived utility to be offered to users
- Risk assessment tools that would be used to mitigate risks
- Allowed degree of deviance from the planned functioning of the system
- Hazard Identification And Analysis Over The Life Cycle Of The System
The next step is to identify the hazard, its likelihood of occurrence across the system lifecycle, and potential future variations. This helps develop a risk profile and deploy a risk mitigation plan accordingly.
Engineers begin with risk analyses, such as Preliminary Hazard Analysis (PHA), the Fault Tree Analysis (FTA), and the Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA), to identify potential hazards.
- Risk Assessment
As discussed above, we assess risks that could hinder the system’s functioning using various risk analysis methods. Accurate risk assessment determines how well it will be managed.
Risk Assessment Methods used at Dansob to assess systems safety:
- Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA)
- Fault Tree Analysis (FTA)
- Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA)
- Functional Hazard Assessment (FHA)
- System Safety Assessment (SSA)
- Subsystem Functional Hazard Assessment (SFHA)
- Zonal Safety Analyses (ZSA)
- Common Mode Analyses (CMA)
The risks are expressed in terms of severity, probability of occurrence, and consequences.
- Identifying & Assessing Risk Mitigation Measures
The main idea here is to propose a course of action to eliminate the risk, control it, or limit its consequences. It requires changes to the system design to eliminate/mitigate the risk, rather than temporary fixes that only delay its occurrence.
The most feasible risk mitigation plan is selected based on parameters like safety integrity levels or cost-benefit analysis, which vary as per business profiles.
- Implementing Risk Mitigation Measures
After selecting an appropriate risk mitigation measure, it is implemented into the design, software, procedures, and training.
This is done to ensure that the hazard posed by the risk is neutralised or reduced to acceptable levels through fail-safe principles and defense barriers. The changes made in the design or processes should be such that they do not pose any new hazards.
- Verification of Risk Reduction
Once the risk mitigation measures have been implemented, it’s time to check whether the hazard has been eliminated/or mitigated. For this, we SSE validates the effectiveness of risk reduction through:
- Testing
- Simulations
- Audits
- Independent reviews
All these risk reduction verification protocols ensure that the risk has been mitigated to acceptable levels or eliminated (if possible).
- Tracking of Hazards & Risks
The last step in System Safety Engineering is to keep a proper track of the occurrence and elimination/mitigation of risks over the system’s lifecycle. To ensure this, a closed-loop HTS (Hazard Tracking System) is maintained.
The Hazard Tracking System:
- Monitors open hazards
- Tracks changes
- Reassess risks as the system environment changes
The constant monitoring of risks allows the system to be wary of similar hazards in the future and helps your business function more efficiently.
Trust Your System Safety Engineering Needs to Dansob ESS
If you also want a system that experiences few to no failures and prioritizes customer safety, partner with Dansob. We’ll provide safety and systems engineering solutions that ensure the safe operation of your systems throughout their lifecycle.
- Expert Team
We have an experienced team of engineers who specialize in system safety. Each of our team members is experienced in different industry domains to provide you with specialized safety engineering practices solutions.
- Tailored Solutions
As we provide engineered safety solutions to a variety of industries, we can custom-build them to suit your business demands. Be it a cutting-edge aerospace project or a utility food delivery system, we design it all. Our experts ensure that every system functions safely and properly, protecting the people, property, and environment with its risk mitigation protocols.
- Comprehensive Services
Get a comprehensive package of system safety engineering services from us, from consulting to full-scale system safety implementation. Our expert team will be there with you each step of the way to ensure you know how your systems work, safely and efficiently.
- Industry Standards
Across aerospace, food, utilities, nuclear energy, healthcare, defense, and automotive, Dansob serves a broad range of industries. We have expertise in all applicable Safety Regulations and Standards.
Key Takeaways
Building a robust product or service in today’s dynamic world necessitates the use of system safety engineering. If your customers can easily interact with your product/service without the system encountering any kind of failure, their trust in your company grows. And with that trust, grows your market domination.
If you are a business in the USA, no matter which industry, and want state-of-the-art safety and systems engineering solutions, connect with Dansob ESS. At Dansob, your business will get the competitive edge with advanced safety infused into its systems to win the trust of your customers. Let’s work together and take your business to new heights with robust system engineering solutions.
