| The development of the Safe Software specification within PLCopen is a success story. It took the PLCopen Technical Committee 5 -TC5- a relatively short time of only 2.5 years to complete the first functional safety standard ever published. The document itself provides a deep level of description. It does not only describe the functionalities, but also includes full state diagrams which add to the understanding, references to the applicable standards, description of error behavior, functional checks, and error codes, and identifies different programming levels. As such it is an ideal platform for implementers. For users, additional information on safety devices, connections and wiring is of course needed. The first five chapters of the specification contain the software model, the subset, and the concept of generic Function Blocks. The remaining two chapters define the specific Function Blocks, 20 in total, as well as the PLCopen certification procedure. The official PLCopen safety software specification is now available for downloading free of charge at the PLCopen website www.plcopen.org .
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