Advertisement Feature Cover Story Machinery safety - a 360° approach
The emphasis on safety in manufacturing is continually increasing, as is the complexity of standards and directives. Unfortunately, many safety certification courses concentrate solely on particular aspects, and neglect the ‘bigger picture’. Achieving CMSE (Certified Machinery Safety Expert) is, according to David Collier of Pilz, the optimum way to demonstrate your competence in the whole machinery safety lifecycle
Competence is a requirement The Machinery Directive 2006/42 EC and The Use of Work Equipment 2009/104 EC directives state that vali- dation tests should be carried out with the highest degree of professional integrity and technical competence. Competence is a requirement of every engineer assessing a plant or machine or providing a service.
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ore often than not, incident investigations discover sev- eral safety issues with equip- ment involved in accidents. These safety issues originate in all phases of the lifecycle - specification, design, manufacture, use, modifica- tion, maintenance etc. It is becoming more and more apparent that legisla- tion in itself is not enough - engineers need to have the competence and understanding to act in accordance with directives and standards. Engineers often ‘learn’ safety through experience alone. Proactive organisa- tions demand additional education and certification of employees as the preferred way of reducing safety issues on sites.
By way of training and/or experi- ence, a competent person is knowl- edgeable in applicable standards, is capable of identifying workplace haz- ards relating to the specific operation and has the authority to correct them.
Training is an investment Employees with responsibility for machinery safety (often multi-tasking) are increasingly expected not only to have, but also to prove, competence. It has also been shown that correctly specified safety measures could lead to greater productivity. This makes safety a critical factor for success. A consistent safety philosophy includes not only provision of safe machines, but training of key employees with responsibility for worker safety and for safe control systems.
Below: the CMSE training programme is primarily aimed at design engineers, project engineers, safety engineers and development engineers from the field of automation technology as well as maintenance engineers and industrial engineers
Left: David Collier of Pilz claims that achieving CMSE (Certified Machinery Safety Expert) is the optimum way to demonstrate your competence in the whole machinery safety lifecycle
The high costs of not addressing machinery safety are well documented - not only the ‘up front’ cost of acci- dents. Insurance costs covering injury, ill health and damage account for roughly ten percent of costs - the other 90% of costs are ‘hidden’ such as product and material damage, plant, machinery and building damage, legal costs, emergency supplies, cleaning site, production delays, temporary labour, fines and loss of expertise. The minimisation of the risk of acci- dents is not the only benefit of imple- menting a good machinery safety concept. It will offer a level of safety that conforms to relevant standards and leg- islation without being ‘over engineered’ and prohibitively expensive. A poor safety concept may not only lead a machine to fail to conform, it may actively hinder the machine operators, leading them to seek ways to overcome the safety measures. It can make machine maintenance more difficult and time consuming, impact on avail- ability through a high number of ‘false trips’ and can be difficult to diagnose and maintain.
The person developing the overall safety concept needs to have an in- depth knowledge of the relevant legis- lation, regulations and standards, as well as the appropriate safety tech- nologies. It is vital they are able to take the ‘360° approach’.
Risk assess first
Some companies take the approach that all hazards need to be covered by safety functions and safety devices using EN ISO 13849-1 - safety of machinery; safety of related parts of control systems; general principles for design or EN 62061 - safety of machin- ery; functional safety of safety related electrical, electronic and programma- ble electronic control systems. The reason for this approach could be that the risk graph in Annex A.1 of EN ISO 13849-1 is often mistakenly viewed as a risk assessment. In actual fact, the output of this ‘risk graph’ is not a mea- sure of risk with some kind of hazard rating number - it is actually a determi- nation of a required Performance Level (PL a - e) for a particular safety func- tion. It is actually very important to
6 SPRING 2013 Industrial Compliance
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