PLCopen Safety certification

Included in the specification are the rules for PLCopen Safety compliance and certification.

The applying company has to be a voting member of PLCopen. Certified companies are allowed to use the PLCopen Safety logo. The use of the PLCopen logo does not give any guarantee about any compliance or fulfillment. The use of the logo just refers to the inclusion of the ideas and guidelines as described in the PLCopen specification, within the relevant software environment.

There are different levels of certification applicable:

Certification of the software tools, often part of the control supplier
Certification / Conformity of the application at the user and/or machine builder

Ad 1: Certification of the software tool supplier

The development environment, including the safety related function blocks, as well as the underlying hardware, have to be certified by the relevant safety related bodies. In order to be able to be certified, certain rules, like described in IEC 61508 and related standards like IEC 61511, are applicable. The PLCopen specification provides a framework for this; however the overall requirements are beyond the scope of PLCopen, and have to be dealt with by external dedicated organizations.

Ad 2: Certification / Conformity of the application

Within an application, a certification includes the safety related software combined with the infrastructure, like sensors, switches and actuators, connection schemes, etc, as described in standards like IEC 62061. Certification or approvals for the application software are made easier, however the full application have to be dealt with by external dedicated organizations.

Certifications are published on this website: Certified Products - Safety