Yet another U-turn on Machinery Safety Directive compliance dates!
Author : Suzanne Gill
At a meeting of the European Machinery Working Group last week in Brussels, the EU Commission once again discussed the request from the European Committee for Standardization (CEN) to extend EN 954-1’s presumption of conformity. Pilz tells us that, according to information it has received from a representative of the CEN, the majority of member states were in favour of an extension and that this will be granted!
However, the Commission still has to define an exact timescale for this extension and we still have to wait for this to be published - maybe today - in the Official EU Journal.
It is only when this date is published that we finally know how much longer the presumption of conformity for EN 954-1, in parallel with EN ISO 13849-1 and EN/IEC 62061, will apply.
Commenting on this news, John McAuliffe, Head of the International Services Group and General Manager of Pilz, said: "As safety experts in automation and machinery, there are various reasons why we can only recommend that manufacturers and operators apply the successor standards EN ISO 13849-1 and EN/IEC 62061 as early as possible."
Other suppliers are in agreement that manufacturers and operators should apply the new standards anyway to avoid the confusion of which safety standard to use.
Steve Sands, Festo's product manager, was unequivocal about the right course of action. He said: "We all need to fully commit to the production world's ideal of zero machine-related accidents. Although machine builders will continue to benefit from EN 954-1's presumption of conformity for a while, a much better way of complying with both the intention and the spirit of Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC is to adopt the new EN ISO 13849-1 safety standard now, and move forward together."
Paul Considine, from Wieland, made the point that, whilst EN954-1 has been granted an extension it will still, at some point, be replaced by EN13849-1. The new standard allows new safety technology such as programmable safety relays, to be used which will help make life easier.
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