It was on New Year’s Eve last year that we bade farewell to
EN 954-1 and said hello to EN ISO 13849-1; we also
welcomed the ‘Machinery Safety Alliance’, a group of
machinery safety experts intent on helping users make
sense of safety

The non-profit Machinery Safety
Alliance comprises Festo, Fortress
Interlocks, Pilz Automation
Technology, Troax, UK Engineering, and
Werma, each providing expertise from its
own field to help machine builders and users
make sense of safety while safeguarding
productivity.

With the withdrawal of EN 954-1 (which
up until the end of 2011 provided
presumption of conformity to the Machinery
Directive 2006/42/EC), EN ISO 13849 is set
to become the most widely used standard for
the design, verification and validation of
safety related parts of control systems.

EN ISO 13849-1 states that electromechanical,
non-electrical (for example
hydraulic, pneumatic, mechanical), complex
electronic (programmable) and
combinations of all these technologies are
within its scope. Any component within the
realms of these technologies can play a part
in safety with the proviso that reliability data
(in the form of a B10d, MTTFd or PFH) can
be found for it. In addition to components
which contribute to functional safety, other
components essential in machinery safety
include guards (such as perimeter fences,
sliding and hinge gates) and signalling
devices (such as beacons and sounders).

Collectively, as suppliers of safety
components and systems (pneumatics,
trapped key, key exchange, solenoid locks,
interlock switches, safety relays, safety PLCs,
non-contact switches, RFID switches, light
curtains, safe 3D vision, safe automation, safe
motion, guard systems, signalling) the
members of the Machinery Safety Alliance
have committed to providing shared
knowledge of these technologies in
accordance with what will become the de
facto functional safety standard and other
relevant standards.

David Collier of Pilz Automation says:
“No single vendor or even integrator has all
of these collective technologies, attendant
technical support, manufacturing and
application experience under one roof.

Machine safety compliance has opened up to
more technologies with the slow
introduction of EN ISO 13849, and there is
still a learning curve for builders, users and
even some component suppliers to go
through with it. Added to this it takes a great
deal of experience and engineering insight to
strike a balance between safety compliance,
ergonomics, productivity, resistance to
manipulation (overriding) and cost.

“As a group, our mission is to make sense
of safety and to safeguard UK productivity
by providing practical, up-to-date knowledge
of the legislation, the best selection of
available technologies, the best application
advice for these technologies, all the
reliability data as required, a collective
experience spanning virtually all of industry,
opportunities for training, consultation,
engineering service and a single place to be
contacted.”
The Machinery Safety Alliance has a web
portal (http://www.machinery-safetyalliance.

co.uk) and is hosting a series of
seminars at various venues around the UK.

The focus of the seminars will be on the realworld
application of various technologies,
and the application of EN ISO 13849-1 as
well as other safety-relevant standards (such
as EN ISO 12100:2010 for general risk
assessment and risk reduction, EN 13857 for
safe distances, and others). A member of the
Health and Safety Laboratory will open the
event with his perspective on machine safety.

Richard Brooks has worked previously in
compliance services and as a machine
builder, so brings with him three different
perspectives of machine safety (enforcement,
compliance and engineering).

Visitors to the website will be able to book
places at the seminars, which will be held at
venues of special interest to engineers:
27th June, Manchester Concorde
Conference Centre
5th September, Bristol Explore@Bristol
Centre
Readers can also subscribe to a regular
newsletter addressing the wide gamut of
topics in machine safety today.

David Collier concludes: “We really think
we can be stronger than the sum of our
parts, and help to boost understanding of
machinery safety in the UK. Not only do we
offer diverse technology expertise, but a wide
range of experience across all industry
sectors.”