Evaluation of safety and security verification of machinery and plants in context of Industry 4.0 applications
- Project number: F 2474
- Institution: Federal Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (BAuA)
- Status: Completed Project
Description:
As digitalisation advances, the digital networking of machines and plant is clearly increasing within organisations. It is crucial for employees’ safety and health to be protected under these changed conditions as well. This requires health risks to be assessed and, where necessary, action taken that reduces them to tolerable levels.
This research project investigated the technical safety challenges to be anticipated during the manufacture and operation of digitally networked machines and plant. It identified what solutions and legislation already exist in this domain and what questions still remain to be resolved. Attention was paid in particular to IT security and its links with the functional safety of machines and plant.
The literature search and contextual analysis that were carried out fed into an exploratory analysis of the current approaches, concepts, laws, standards, and technical rules and regulations relevant when risk assessing digitally networked machines and plant. Furthermore, recent trends in their development were explored.
It is apparent from the project’s results that IT security constitutes an extensive specialist field in its own right. Its aims and methodologies differ significantly from those followed by experts in the safety of machines and operational systems. Appropriate safety/security co-engineering is therefore essential if the two specialisms are to be coordinated. It was shown that the methodologies formulated up until now to formalise co-engineering of this kind are still in their infancy and uniform procedures have not yet become established. This means further research and development work will be necessary to ensure the methodologies implemented for this purpose are suitable in practice. Their integration into standards and technical rules and regulations should foster consensus among all stakeholders and gain acceptance for their regular use.