Design method for systematic safety integration

In the discipline of product design, safety barriers implementation for risk reduction usually intervenes in the end of the design process, in the detailed design stage, and are rapidly increasing in variety, size, complexity and sophistication. In fact, there is no formal method to set safety requirements in the early design from knowledge abstraction. This paper looks at the problem of synthesizing safety solutions in the early design process. A structured method is proposed for systematic safety requirements definition through experience feedbacks and technical solutions analysis. The application to the agricultural hitching system, the three-point hitch, is then developed. Finally, the requirements formulation and their impact on the solution are explained.