Today’s engineering systems are no longer purely mechanical. Electric vehicles, autonomous driving systems, defense platforms, railway systems, industrial automation equipment, and smart machines all incorporate hundreds of sensors, electronic control units (ECUs), software modules, and communication networks.
A failure in these systems can lead not only to performance degradation but also to:
As a result, modern engineering organizations are expected not only to develop innovative products but also to prove that these products are safe and reliable.
This is where Ansys Medini plays a crucial role.
Ansys Medini Analyze is a model-based engineering platform designed to support Functional Safety, Reliability, and Cybersecurity processes for safety-critical systems. It enables organizations to perform and manage key safety analyses such as HARA, FMEA, FMEDA, FTA, DFA, and STPA within a unified environment.
The platform supports compliance with major international standards, including:
By integrating safety activities throughout the product lifecycle, Medini helps organizations streamline certification and risk management processes.
Consider the development of an electronic braking system for a modern vehicle.
The design is completed.
The software has been implemented.
Testing activities have been performed.
However, critical questions still remain:
Without systematically addressing these questions, it is impossible to demonstrate that a product is truly safe.
Functional safety engineering focuses on answering exactly these types of questions.
HARA is one of the core processes defined in ISO 26262.
It identifies potential hazards and evaluates associated risks based on severity, exposure, and controllability.
Typical examples include:
The outcome of HARA is the determination of Automotive Safety Integrity Levels (ASILs), which drive subsequent safety requirements.
FMEA systematically evaluates how components can fail and how those failures affect the overall system.
Example:
Sensor Failure
↓
Incorrect Data
↓
Incorrect Control Action
↓
System Malfunction
By identifying failure chains early in development, engineering teams can implement preventive and corrective measures before deployment.
FMEDA extends traditional FMEA by incorporating diagnostic coverage and hardware reliability metrics.
It is commonly used for:
Medini supports calculations for:
These metrics are essential for demonstrating compliance with functional safety standards.
FTA uses a top-down approach to identify root causes of system failures.
Example:
Vehicle Does Not Brake
↓
ECU Failure
OR
Sensor Failure
OR
Power Supply Failure
Fault trees help engineering teams understand the relationships between component failures and critical system-level events.
DFA evaluates common-cause and cascading failures that may impact multiple system elements simultaneously.
For example, a single thermal event could affect several sensors or electronic modules at once.
These analyses are particularly important in aerospace, defense, railway, and automotive applications.
STPA focuses on complex interactions and unsafe control actions that may not be captured by traditional failure-based methods.
It is especially valuable for:
STPA enables engineers to identify hazards arising from system interactions rather than component failures alone.
As products become increasingly connected, cybersecurity has become a critical engineering requirement.
Ansys Medini supports cybersecurity engineering processes aligned with ISO/SAE 21434, including:
Typical cybersecurity scenarios include:
By integrating cybersecurity and functional safety workflows, organizations can better protect both system integrity and user safety.
One of the greatest challenges in safety engineering is maintaining consistency across multiple analyses and engineering disciplines.
Many organizations still rely on disconnected spreadsheets and independent tools for:
This often results in:
Ansys Medini addresses these challenges by providing complete traceability between hazards, requirements, architectures, analyses, and verification activities.
Additionally, it integrates with tools such as:
This creates a connected digital engineering workflow across the entire product lifecycle.
At FE-TECH, we go beyond simulation.
We help organizations establish comprehensive safety engineering processes through:
Whether you operate in automotive, defense, aerospace, railway, or industrial sectors, our team can help you integrate safety and cybersecurity into your product development process efficiently and effectively.
A product that functions correctly is not necessarily a safe product.
True engineering excellence requires understanding how a system behaves under fault conditions and demonstrating compliance with international safety standards.
Ansys Medini enables organizations to manage functional safety and cybersecurity activities within a single integrated platform, helping engineering teams develop safer, more reliable, and certification-ready products.
If you would like to learn more about Ansys Medini or discuss your safety engineering challenges, contact FE-TECH today and discover how we can support your journey toward safer product development.