Using safety control systems to achieve safe control technology: Safe control technology

The model of safety technology as a pure “monitoring function” is changing drastically: Safety technology may have been almost exclusively associated with emergency off/emergency stop, light curtains and interlocks for a long time, but it would now be unthinkable not to regard the issue of safety on drives, for example. Other areas will include safe pneumatics and hydraulics. Applications will emerge from areas which are not yet the focus of our attention, but one thing is clear: Safety is an integral part of the overall plant and machine function, so it must
be considered appropriately, right from the start. In simple language, safe control technology means: Make the control function safe! Safe control technology becomes reality when safety enjoys the same mechanisms, the same handling and the same flexibility as the standard section, at all levels of automation technology.

This does not mean that safety and standard functions have to be combined inside one device. What's important is that they work together to process tasks as a system, without impeding each other. Each device, each control system, should do what it does best. The system's backbone is an extremely powerful bus system, which manages data traffic in the background. The result of this technological development is a system which uses the intrinsic benefits of technology control systems. For example, it makes no sense for a safety control system to have to carry out motion functions, when that's a specific task of the motion technology control system.

Safety and standard control systems combined in one system.

Ultimately however, this means that all the control systems have to be able to share access to the same data, without the user being required to organize it this way. The system must perform this task automatically in the background. In future, even the tools must have the same look and feel, plus standardized handling. Whether it's motion, control or visualization: Handling of the various functions and tasks must be seamless.