New languages and functionality for Safety Automation Builder

With over 15,000 downloads, 3000 of which have been in the EMEA region, SAB - which is designed to help machinery automation system engineers save time when designing safety systems - has been a huge success and was nominated at last year's SPS Drives as one of the top 10 most innovative products at the show.

SAB automates the safety-selection process to help speed system design and minimise human error. With SAB, users import an image of the machinery they wish to safeguard and answer questions using a drop-down menu and help screens to identify and select the necessary safeguards. The software then compiles all product selections, generates a bill of materials, and compiles necessary data to populate SISTEMA.

Additional functionality and languages for SAB

David Reade, Business Development Consultant, Safety and Sensing, EMEA at Rockwell Automation, says: "We have seen incredible uptake of this software package and with the additional functionality and language sets, the download figure is sure to get even bigger. One of the biggest advantages it offers is that it can act as a multi-language front end to the IFA's SISTEMA software, a utility that provides developers and testers of safety-related machine controls with comprehensive support in the evaluation of safety in the context of ISO 13849-1.

"As SISTEMA has a limited language set, the use of SAB helps augment the process of report generation in additional languages, therefore developers in more countries can now use SAB in their own language and then import this data into SISTEMA where a final report can then be generated in one of the core languages offered by SISTEMA. This is especially useful for cross-country projects where machines are being developed and then exported. Inside the tool you can have someone generate a file in Czech, this can then be sent to an end user in Spain and SAB will automatically switch languages. SAB files can be transferred back and forth and, due to the cell-by-cell data entry, the translation does not change any of the functional data in the master file.

"We are seeing major take-up of SAB across territories within large multinationals. By utilising SAB they can accept safety designs from a variety of OEMs in a common format. Using SAB, they can generate outline safety concepts for a machine in local languages and then export them to other design offices around the world. This approach cuts paperwork significantly. I saw this first-hand recently at an end user in Italy, using a Hungarian SI with a German machine builder. They all generated SAB data in local language and then simply toggled between the files/languages."

Enhanced safety function library

In addition to the enhanced language set, SAB also exhibits multiple additions to its extensive safety function library, a library of pre-configured, pre-engineered design documents containing detailed information for many safeguarding methods, including specific functionality, Performance Level (PL) category data and required input, logic and output components. These documents also include parts lists, electrical drawings, a SISTEMA project file, and verification and validation plans. The huge uptake of the software has also enabled Rockwell Automation to significantly expand the help files based on extensive user experiences.

New SAB Languages include Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Dutch, Czech, Swedish, Danish, Hungarian, Finnish, Romanian, Polish, Chinese, Japanese and Korean.

Follow the links for more information about the Safety Automation Builder Tool and SISTEMA.