Patent ID: 11880268
Assignee: SCHNEIDER ELECTRIC SYSTEMS USA, INC.
Field: Computer technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC G | IPC G

Claim 10:
11. A method for managing soft errors associated with one or more safety programmable logic controllers (PLCs), the method comprising:
receiving an expected soft error rate for one or more types of input/output (I/O) modules over time;
receiving respective soft error data that was aggregated by respective safety PLCs of the one or more safety PLCs based on soft errors detected by I/O modules coupled to the respective safety PLCs;
determining actual soft error rates per I/O module type based on the received soft error data;
predicting soft error rates for the one or more safety PLCs per I/O module type;
comparing the actual and/or predicted soft error rates to the expected soft error rate per I/O module type; and
taking one or more actions in response to a threshold deviation between the actual and/or predicted soft error rates relative to the expected soft error rate for the corresponding I/O module type, the method further comprising:
in response to determining there is a threshold deviation between the actual and/or predicted soft error rates for a group of safety PLCs of the one or more safety PLCs, determining whether there is a threshold deviation between the actual and/or predicted soft error rate for a subgroup of the group of safety PLCs or an individual safety PLC of the group of safety PLCs; and
identifying which subgroup or individual safety PLC is a cause of the threshold deviation based on a result of determining whether there is a threshold deviation for the subgroup of safety PLCs or the individual safety PLC.