Schneider patents the use of AI to reduce industrial hazards
14 February 2025 
Schneider Electric has been granted a patent on using artificial intelligence (AI) to help identify potential hazards and protective measures in industrial processes. The technique analyses the hazards automatically or semi-automatically, and validates the protection mechanisms.
This patent is a part of a Schneider strategic initiative that is using AI to enhance functional safety. It can simulate various hazards, and then attempt to avoid dangerous conditions using a hazard analysis tool to generate protective measures.
The method establishes communications between the hazard analysis tool and process simulation tools. It can determine safety requirements for a process and use them to generate PLC safety programs.
Schneider says the patented technique has the potential to identify potential hazards and safeguards. Safety management can then use real-time industrial data to revalidate Hazop (hazard and operability) studies to avoid the hazards and potentially save lives.
“We are the first to push this boundary of automating the hazard process analysis with artificial intelligence,” says Chris Stogner, Schneider Electric’s senior director of offer management. “Bringing AI to functional safety has the potential to create a more rigorous and robust Hazop study, generating more combinations of scenarios and deviations then what was humanly possible before.”
Work on the patent has been done by Schneider’s EcoStruxure Triconex Safety team. The company has three other pending patents covering the use of AI in functional safety.
Schneider says there is a growing interest in combining human ingenuity in functional safety analysis with strategic implementation of re-enforced learning to avoid hazardous scenarios in industrial automation.
