Many design engineers use the SISTEMA software from the BGIA (the German Institute for Occupational Health and Safety) when they have to select and configure their safety guards. This software utility provides developers and testers of safety-related machine controls with comprehensive support in the evaluation of safety in the context of DIN EN ISO 13849-1. The tool enables modelling the structure of the safety-related control components based upon the designated architectures, thereby permitting the automated calculation of the reliability values with various levels of detail, including that of the attained Performance Level.

In order to further facilitate this task for the engineers and to provide for a clear and praxis-oriented valuation base for the safety of machine controls, the Schmersal Group has created a library for its products, which can be directly imported into SISTEMA.

When the user imports this library, he has all relevant product data from the Schmersal and ELAN safety switchgear at his disposal. The library includes for instance “elements” for electromechanical safety switches with the relevant information, e.g. the B10D values. This value is an important element, which introduces the – until now missing – probabilistic element into the calculation. It represents the number of operations, for which statistically 10% of the random samples present a failure. The lifetime TM to DIN EN ISO 13849-1 is indicated as well. For more complex and electronic safety switchgear, the library contains “subsystems” with a praxis-oriented specification of the PFH value.
The library is permanently completed and extended. It is available for download as ZIP-file. The product list contained in the ZIP-file facilitates the selection and navigation for the user.