Functional safety and Industrie 4.0

Industrie 4.0 offers a new vision for the factories of the future. In these factories of the future safety will be critical. Functional safety addresses confidence that a piece of equipment will carry out its safety functionality when required to do so. It is an active form of safety in contrast to other forms of safety. Integrated circuits are fundamental in the implementation of functional safety and therefore to Industrie 4.0. This paper explores the implications of functional safety for Industrie 4.0. The implications include requirements for networks, security, robots/cobots and software and the semiconductors used to implement these features.