Qualification and Selection of Off-the-Shelf Components for Safety Critical Systems: A Systematic Approach

Mission critical systems are increasingly been developed by means of Off-The-Shelf (OTS) items since this allows reducing development costs. Crucial issues to be properly treated are (i) to assess the quality of each potential OTSitem to be used and (ii) to select the one that better fits the system requirements. Despite the importance of these issues, the current literature lacks a systematic approach to perform the previous two operations. The aim of this paper is to present a framework that can overcome this lack. Reasoning from the available product assurance standards for certifying mission critical systems, the proposed approach is based on the customized quality model that describes the quality attributes. Such quality model will guide a proper evaluation of OTS products, and the choice of which product to use is based on the outcomes of such an evaluation process. This framework represents a key solution to have a dominant role in the market of mission critical systems due to the demanding request by manufactures of such systems for an efficient qualification/certification process.