Systems Engineering And Functional Safety at Protean Electric is like cooking a complicated dish.  

And what do you do when you are interested in a new dish? You begin by asking things such as:  

What is the dish and what do I need to cook it?

Is it nutritious?

How does it taste?

What are the ingredients and how do they mix?   

These are the questions that we ask ourselves while working on our motors and engineering solutions for clients.  

How Systems Engineering works 

Our Systems Engineers work in collaboration with our other engineering disciplines to define:   

1)    What is the dish. What is the system and what is it for?  

2)    Is it nutritious? Does the system meet the requirements set? And how does it taste, I.e., how it fits within the System Architecture. This includes:  

Performance – Is the torque and power suitable for the system solution? 

Functionality – Does the system integrate with the existing vehicle functionality?

Environmental constraints – Does the system integrate with the existing vehicle environment?

Life and durability – How will the system perform in the specific solutions environment over time? And is there any extra testing that needs to happen to confirm this? 

3)    What are the ingredients and how do they mix? This is the system architecture and how to manufacture and assemble it.  

Then the in-laws come for a taste test, and that is your validation and testing phase, to confirm that the above requirements have been met, and no extra issues have been introduced. 

All the above are used by our Engineers as key inputs to design the best solution for our customer’s needs.  

Protean engineers have many years of experience working on delivering solutions to customers. To achieve the above tasks, they typically rely on Model-Based System Engineering (MBSE). This is a fancy acronym for using a formalised methodology to represent a holistic view of the system. To do this we use SysML (System Modelling Language) with the Enterprise Architect (EA) tool.  

Functional Safety & Systems Engineering. What are they to each other?

Functional Safety Experts understand the power of using systems engineering as a tool to ensure the completeness and correctness of safety-related designs.

Functional safety is introduced at the system level to aid product development by: 

 -      Specifying safety requirements to detect and control any hazards identified at the vehicle level,

-       Developing system architecture that implements requirements allocated to the Hardware and Software teams,

-       And integrating, testing, and validating the overall safety concept. 

Industries are increasingly introducing more complexity to their products. Especially in automotive, where the average ECU (Engine Control Unit) count is 100 or more. Making systems engineering and functional safety vital disciplines ensuring all vehicle manufacturer expectations are met.  

If you are still not convinced of their importance, just know that NASA uses them and they have walked on the moon! 

To find out more about how we set the standards for in-wheel motor technology then check out our innovation page.  

Our engineering capability covers the full development of an in-wheel motor solution for all vehicle applications. Our whole development process strictly follows ISO26262 Functional Safety requirements. We ensure that our motors operate safely on a vehicle, and as such we will ensure that ProteanDrive integrates into the Functional Safety architecture of our customer’s vehicles. 

Salsa Adly – Functional Safety & Systems Manager