Customised validation

Inter­na­tional safety direc­tives and stan­dards such as ISO 13849, IEC 62061 and IEC 61508 stip­u­late the fol­lowing: irre­spec­tive of how the func­tion is struc­tured, machine man­u­fac­turers or oper­a­tors must con­firm that the safety design is imple­mented cor­rectly via val­i­da­tion. For example, the machine was moved. Is it still safe? Or the machine is newly pur­chased. Are all poten­tial safety loop­holes closed? Only a val­i­da­tion pro­vides the cer­tainty that the required risk reduc­tion mea­sures have been imple­mented cor­rectly and are suf­fi­cient. It is thus vital before com­mis­sioning of the machine. The require­ments for this can differ according to the spe­cific appli­ca­tion, how­ever. Which level of val­i­da­tion is thus nec­es­sary and useful?

Pilz helps to answer this ques­tion and has adapted its range of ser­vices accord­ingly. “Until now we have offered val­i­da­tion as a full-ser­vice package,” says Jan Franck, Engi­neer at Pilz. “How­ever, in cer­tain cases – for example when buying machinery from man­u­fac­turers with whom you already have a good working rela­tion­ship, when iden­tical machines are already installed or when minor changes are made to existing machines – then a scaled-down check may be suf­fi­cient.”

Thanks to its three dif­ferent levels, the new range of ser­vices allows for a tailor-made val­i­da­tion in terms of both the scope and depth of the work. A struc­tured val­i­da­tion method and tried and tested test tem­plates guar­antee the highest safety.

The choice of the level is decided by:

• Legal require­ments and applic­able stan­dards
• Cus­tomer require­ments
• Budget
• Cost effi­ciency of the assess­ments to be per­formed

While Level 1 val­i­da­tion con­tains a basic check, which high­lights the key non-con­for­mances, Level 2 car­ries out a more thor­ough exam­i­na­tion, par­tic­u­larly in the area of func­tional safety. This guar­an­tees that the machine pro­vides ade­quate safety mea­sures. The Level 3 val­i­da­tion ser­vice is an inten­sive, detailed con­for­mity check, as required for CE con­for­mity. At all three levels, machine man­u­fac­turers and oper­a­tors ben­efit from the spe­cialist knowl­edge of Pilz experts.