Premature Detonation Avoided

While performing a Software Safety Analysis for a Radio-Frequency-Initiated Detonator, we analyzed the hardware/software interface. We decided to go “outside the box” and analyze the circuitry which insured the microprocessor would come out of power-up reset correctly … turns out– it didn’t reset properly! The processor could therefore operate erratically, which could initiate an unexpected detonation!

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Optimizing Safety Tests Saves $

The TLDHS Safety Tests had grown to over 100 pages of procedures. Understanding the software architecture led us to believe that some of these tests may be redundant.

We decided to thoroughly examine the code and uncovered many places in which different tests exercised the exact same code, using the same parameters and state information. We re-wrote the Safety Tests to remove all these redundancies.

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Awarded “Best Contributor”

Glucose Meter
We were tasked with performing detailed Software testing and analysis of a safety-critical medical diagnostic device. As we investigated the code we discovered:
  • Unbounded recursion through 8 levels of calls in an error detection / reporting routine
  • Critical data which could be corrupted when Interrupt Service Routines (ISRs) ran at specific relative times
  • Execution times for critical ISRs which were much longer than the designers intended
  • Dozens of other potential problems of varying severity

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Fast Fix for Huge Safety Change

The USMC changed the definition of “Troops in Contact“, a critical feature of the Software Safety design for the TLDHS. Removing all the places this data was referenced throughout the software would take many 100s of man-hours. It could also comprise the software, and thus would require extensive testing.

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$100Ks Saved by Clarifying Reliability Goals

We were tasked to provide Safety Support for the Marine Corps GBOSS project. The Logistics team was required to insure that our product had a Mean-Time-Between-Failure (MTBF) below a certain threshold. They used statistics to show that we would need to conduct 1000s of hours of testing. Since this was a complex and expensive system, this approach was going to require extending the schedule and adding $100,000s to the project cost.

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Training Cost Reduced 95%

One of our clients asked for a 30-minute e-Learning course, which they needed done right away and would have cost on the order of $50,000 to develop. Instead of just saying “Yes, sir – we can do that!” we took the time to explore the “Why’s” of the project.

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Test Strategy boosts Medical Device

We directed a medical device manufacturer away from low-impact software testing activities to those with a high return on their efforts.

Although not in our original scope, we decided to take a detailed look at the Real-Time Operating System (RTOS) they were depending on. We discovered many potential issues with the RTOS, and steered them to a safer utilization.

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