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

Claim 14:
15. 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 identifying an individual safety PLC that is a cause of the threshold deviation, comparing soft error rates per I/O module of the safety PLC and/or per semiconductor component of a selected I/O module of the I/O modules of the safety PLC to expected soft error rates per I/O module and/or per semiconductor component; and
identifying one or more of the I/O modules of the safety PLC that is a cause of the threshold deviation and/or one or more semiconductor components of the selected I/O module that is a cause of the threshold deviation based on the comparison to the expected soft error rates per I/O module and/or per semiconductor component.