When designing functionally safe motor-control applications, should you tackle functional safety compliance at the beginning, as an initial design requirement? Or should you treat functional safety as an add-on feature, incorporated into the final stages of your design?

Functional safety should be part of the initial design requirements – interwoven with the intended functionality of the motor drive. This isn’t the norm, because traditional system design workflows don’t approach safety compliance synergistically. But neglecting to consider how you need to meet safety integrity compliance at the outset can result in costly delays when introducing systems to market.

The onset of Industry 4.0 and the growth of vehicle electrification and connectivity require that we change our approach to functional safety compliance. Simply put, we now have more motor systems in more applications, and a high bar for complying with functional safety standards.