For five years, Fennec Engineering has operated in quiet dedication, working alongside Amazon to tackle a critical industry challenge: the inefficient and expensive process of regulatory safety certification. After operating a solution for over four years inside of Amazon, Fennec is thrilled to unveil to the public the Advanced Safety Acceleration Platform (ASAP).
The Challenge: Certification’s Time and Cost Bottleneck
Traditional safety certification methods are fragmented, manual, and time-consuming, leading to significant delays and escalating costs. This is particularly challenging for the rapidly evolving landscape of AI-integrated systems, which demand rigorous and automated verification.
The Solution: ASAP – An Assessor-Qualified, Full-Lifecycle Safety Toolset
Based on a tool developed for Amazon, ASAP is the world’s first assessor-qualified, full-lifecycle safety toolset. Think of ASAP as a guided, automated system for your entire functional safety process, much like TurboTax simplifies tax preparation. ASAP streamlines and automates each step, from hazard analysis to real-time verification, significantly reducing errors and accelerating certification.
This collaboration is about combining strengths: Fennec Engineering brings deep expertise in safety and technological innovation. Amazon has experience in developing and scaling robotics solutions that benefit their operations employees and customers. Together, we’re solving a challenge that’s been overlooked for too long. While AI and software advancements power innovation in robotics design, functional safety processes are still stuck in the past—relying on outdated document trackers and spreadsheets.
That changes with ASAP, a new safety software toolkit from Fennec Engineering. ASAP brings functional safety processes into the modern age, dramatically reducing the time required to achieve functional safety certification in robotics.
“Safety has always been central to our robotics development, and we saw an opportunity to streamline the certification process and make it more efficient,” said Parris Wellman, Vice President, Engineering and Robotics at Amazon Robotics. “By working with Fennec Engineering to develop a safety software toolkit—used in the rapid development of technologies like our autonomous mobile robot (AMR), Proteus—we’re now helping the broader robotics industry raise the bar for safety.”
ASAP delivers fully automated analysis, planning, and design for both safety and performance verification and validation. This is paramount for AI-integrated systems, enabling:
- Automated Safety and Performance Testing: Seamless integration with testing environments for comprehensive and repeatable tests.
- Automated Test Planning and Design: Efficiently generate test plans based on safety requirements and system specifications.
- Enhanced Verification and Validation: Rigorous testing of automation, manufacturing, and AI-driven systems.
- Integrated Tool Suite: Includes hazard and risk assessment, supplier component safety management, requirement creation and management, reliability analysis, and integrated validation and verification toolsets (including automated test cell integration).
- User-Friendly Interface: Guided workflows, automated calculations and checks, clear reporting, and assessor-qualified robustness.
“Building on our successful collaboration with Amazon, which demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach at significant scale, Fennec’s tool streamlines critical safety processes – incorporating advancements like AI – to foster the efficiency and collaboration essential for elevating safety standards throughout manufacturing and supply chains,” said BJ Yurkovich, Chairman and CEO of Fennec Engineering.
ASAP encompasses a powerful suite of integrated tools:
- Hazard and Risk Assessment
- Supplier Component Safety Management
- Requirement Creation and Management
- Reliability Analysis
- Integrated Validation and Verification Toolsets (including automated test cell integration)
The Case Study: Battle-Tested and Proven at Amazon
ASAP has been rigorously tested within Amazon’s global operations, demonstrating its effectiveness across diverse applications. This experience has resulted in significant cost and time savings related to certification and ongoing compliance.
The Mission: Enhancing Safety Worldwide
ASAP’s versatility allows it to support a wide range of industries and standards, which is vital in today’s rapidly evolving landscape of AI-integrated products. It represents a major advancement in safety tooling, particularly in the critical area of automated AI verification.
With ASAP, organizations can:
- Reduce certification time and cost.
- Improve safety assessment accuracy.
- Enhance product and process safety.
- Accelerate innovation, especially in AI-driven technologies.
Fennec is eager to connect with organizations ready to embrace the future of safety certification, especially those developing AI-integrated systems. Join us in creating a safer world.
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