A Comprehensive Creation Method of Hardware and Software Combined Test Specifications for Industrial Product Controlled by Software using HAZOP

This paper proposes a comprehensive creation method of hardware and software combined test (HSCT) specifications for industrial products controlled by software using Hazard and Operability Study (HAZOP) which is a method for analyzing undesirable events. To develop an industrial product that behaves adequately, it is necessary to conduct the HSCT in addition to the hardware and software unit test. The HSCT investigates troubles that cannot be tested at the whole industrial product level. But the coverage is insufficient because the HSCT items are created by the engineer manually. The proposed method creates test items using HAZOP to improve the coverage. Following countermeasures are conducted; (1) The information, such as the equipment name, the parameter name, the type, and send to/ receive from, etc., is added to the HAZOP's parameter. (2) The information that is necessary to create test items is dealt with formally by defining the format of parameter, guide-word, and program parts. (3) The test items are created comprehensively by combining the above-mentioned information. (4) The test specifications corresponding to the test items are developed. As a result of an application of the proposed method, the number of undesirable events which we could find increased about 40% in comparison with manual HSCT specification development.