"The factory of the future is smart and functionally safe" - Managing Directors Michael Plankensteiner from logi.cals and Axel Helmerth from ISH agree on this. "Innovative, flexible and open safety concepts are needed. The basis is networked solutions through long-term, strategic partnerships."

Both companies have been pooling their expertise as independent, cooperating technology providers in the Neuron Group since 2019. The collaboration between logi.cals and ISH will be even more closely interlinked in future as Neuron Automation - with a clear focus on functional safety. "As Neuron Automation, we supply innovative, efficient and functionally safe toolkits and components so that our customers can develop the smart factory of the future," emphasizes Michael Plankensteiner. "The solution package ranges from highly scalable runtime systems and flexible engineering toolkits to ready-to-use technologies for hardware and software." The two companies will retain their independence as GmbHs.

As part of the cooperation, ISH supplies all target system-related components such as evaluation and test boards, certified libraries for code comparison and memory testing or a mathematical library. ISH also supports customers in the start-up phase and accompanies them during the development and certification process. ISH's certified hardware and software kit ("compliant items") is complemented by the logi.CAD 3 engineering solution - a modular, flexibly expandable engineering toolkit that supports application engineering in the most important IEC 61131-3 standard languages (function block language, sequence language, structured text) as well as in programming languages such as C and C++.

Axel Helmerth, ISH: "We offer innovative, flexible and open safety concepts."

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The safety toolchain integrated in logi.CAD 3 enables the realization of safety functions up to SIL 3 according to IEC 61508, PLe according to ISO 13849 and ASIL C. The core components of the toolchain, designed together with ISH, are a configurable module for static code analysis, the integrated test framework and an automated test system. The pragmatic logi.SAFE safety toolkit is also based on this: libraries created by developers with logi.CAD 3 are qualified with the help of the safety toolchain and loaded into the controller via a cloud solution, for example. The editor running in the browser then enables safe parameterization or programming directly in the device.

These are just some of the components and functions that are currently being worked on. Another focus of the future development roadmap is on standardization: pre-qualified modules are intended to significantly simplify the development and certification process. "However, the Neuron solution package already provides users with holistic safety concepts that make it possible to seamlessly combine application and safety engineering," says Michael Plankensteiner.