Fusa_019_ISO 26262 VS Functional Safety Certification
The reason why I decided to write this blog is that two questions I have experienced in the past months. The first question was asked by one of my friend: "I want to change my career as a functional safety engineer, is it necessary to get certificated functional safety engineer first?". The second question was asked by an interviewer when I had an interview: "Do you get certificated by any third-party? We prefer the candidate who have a functional safety certification."
What is the functional safety certification? What is the relationship between functional safety certification and ISO 26262 in the automotive field?
The functional safety certification refers to evaluate and confirm that the automotive safety integrity level of the product/process, or the competence of the person involved in the functional safety activities, or confidence level of the software tool used during functional safety process are met the requirements in ISO 26262 or other functional safety standards like IEC 61508.
As far as I know, there are 4 types functional safety certification available in the market: Personnel certification, Process certification,Product certification and software tool certification.
1. Personal Certification
Functional Safety Personal Certification is preformed to evaluate and confirm that the person ,who wish to work with safety-related automotive E/E systems, have sufficient skills or capability against their responsibility when they are involved in the functional safety activities. This certification are normally conducted by a third-party company. I list some of well-known companies in the picture below.
According to the working experience or skills, the personal certification have several levels.. For Example, the picture below shows the levels definition, roles and certification requirements according to the TUV SGS. There may be a little bit difference in different companies on the levels of personal certification.
Take the functional safety engineer which is mostly certificated in China as an example, the person under certification must have 2 years working experience in automotive E/E system field and take a 2~5 days training course, an examination will be conducted following the course and the one who passed it will get a functional safety engineer certification.
Does the person who involved in the functional safety activities in automotive industry have to be certified by a third party company? The answer is NO. Actually, personal certification is neither required nor suggested in the ISO 26262 series standard. The requirement supports the personal certification is the competence management in ISO 26262: part 2. it says “5.4.4.1 The organization shall ensure that the persons involved in the execution of the safety life-cycle have a sufficient level of skills, competence and qualification corresponding to their responsibilities.”
To achieve the required sufficient skills or competence corresponding to the responsibilities , ISO 26262 provide one possible means by conducting a training and qualification programme. The qualification could consider following factors:
— domain knowledge of the item;
— expertise on the environment of the item;
— management experience; and
— expertise of production, operation, service and decommissioning.
I made a picture to compare the qualification criteria suggested by ISO 26262 against the criteria of personal certification, the difference are highlighted.
Based on the comparison in the picture above, you could find that get functional safety certification doesn’t means that you have sufficient skills or competence when you are involved in the functional safety development activities of a specific item. To meet the competence requirements in ISO 26262, the organization must define the individual criteria based on the roles in the functional safety activities.The certification only provide one possible means to show the competence in some factors.
2. Process Certification
To Be updated
3. Product Certification
To Be updated
4. Tool Certification
To Be updated
6- Reference
[1] Picture from 上海先起“SGS全方位ISO 26262 人员资质鉴定，为汽车安全保驾护航”
[2] ISO 26262:2018 Part 2
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