Machinery Safety 101

In recent posts I’ve been dis­cussing the changes in the use of EN 954–1, Safety of Machinery – Safety Related Parts of Control Systems. Part 1: General Principles for Design. The EU orig­i­nally announced that this stan­dard was to be with­drawn on 31-​​Dec-​​09, being replaced by EN ISO 13849–1. As you may know, there are sig­nif­i­cant dif­fer­ences in these two standards.

A later announce­ment from the European Commission repealed the with­drawal of EN 954–1, extend­ing its use until 31-​​Dec-​​12. This announce­ment was itself withdrawn.

So where do we stand today? Currently, EN 954–1 will be with­drawn on 31-​​Dec-​​09 and will be replaced by EN ISO 13849–1, UNLESS this deci­sion is again reversed by the EC in con­sul­ta­tion with the EC Machinery Working Group. A meet­ing is planned for 7/​8-​​Dec-​​09 to dis­cuss this sit­u­a­tion and to resolve the confusion.

As a machine builder, there is only one pru­dent course of action — imple­ment EN ISO 13849–1 in your designs. If the deci­sion remains as it cur­rently stands, then your prod­ucts will con­form to the require­ments on 31-​​Dec-​​09 and you will be able to con­tinue to ship prod­uct to the EU. If the deci­sion is reversed by the EC and EN 954–1 remains in use until 2012, then you are three years ahead of the require­ment and should be using that to full advan­tage in your mar­ket­ing and sales efforts.

My friend Jon Severn has a post related to this on his blog at MachineBuilding​.net.

+DougNix is Managing Director and Principal Consultant at Compliance InSight Consulting, Inc. (http://​www​.com​pli​an​cein​sight​.ca) in Kitchener, Ontario, and is Lead Author and Managing Editor of the Machinery Safety 101 blog.

Doug’s work includes teach­ing machin­ery risk assess­ment tech­niques pri­vately and through Conestoga College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning in Kitchener, Ontario, as well as pro­vid­ing tech­ni­cal ser­vices and train­ing pro­grams to clients related to risk assess­ment, indus­trial machin­ery safety, safety-​​related con­trol sys­tem inte­gra­tion and reli­a­bil­ity, laser safety and reg­u­la­tory conformity.

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