TC5 - Safety

The independent association PLCopen, together with its members and external safety related organizations, defined safety related aspects within the IEC 61131-3 development environments. With this, the safety aspects can be supported by a dedicated software tool, which is integrated into the software development tools. As such it combines the logic and motion application development with the related safety aspects. This combination helps developers to integrate safety related functionality into their systems, even from the beginning of the development cycle. Also, it contributes to the understanding of safety aspects, as well as reducing the certification time and costs by relevant organizations.

In 2006 the safety specification Part 1 - Concepts and Function Blocks - was released. With this part 1 the safety aspects can be transferred to a software tool, which is integrated in the software development.
Since part 1 is more focused to the implementers of the functionalities, PLCopen realized it needed to do more to help OEMs to add the safety functionality to their machines' application software. For this reason the Part 2 - User Guidelines - was developed.
Part 2 is focused to the users of the PLCopen functionalities and demonstrates the ease of use of the defined function blocks in real life applications.