Machines and products around the world must above all be: safe and reliable. Standards are the most important regulatory tool to ensure that they deliver on their promises. But managing standards is a learning process.
Imagine that your customer’s employees work in South Korea with the same machine as your customer’s employees in China, Brazil or India. Each of their machines meets the formal, technical and safety-related requirements that apply there, they are homogeneous and equally reliable and as a result they were more efficient and less expensive than usual for you to manufacture. An ideal world which sadly is quite tricky to implement in practice.
Standards across the world act as “bouncers” that either allow the use of plants and products in a country – if these meet the corresponding specified expectations – or prohibit their use. They are considered documented agreements which establish the criteria for products, services and procedures. They can be used to guarantee that products and services are fit for purpose, comparable and compatible. Their use within the EU is more or less voluntary, as opposed to in China which also has standards whose application is mandatory.
National standards regime
The conditions for entering each “door”, or country, vary widely. For example, in the EU: The EU uses regulations (which apply as a binding legal act immediately after publication) or directives (such as the Machinery Directive) to formulate general safety objectives. EU directives only take effect when countries within the EU implement them as national laws. Verification of achieving safety objectives thus requires an exact specification.
Machine builders use standards to this end. Verification is easiest when there are harmonised EU standards which are used by machine builders. The reason for this is the “presumption of conformity” these elicit: If I apply these standards, the conformity with the safety objectives defined in them is guaranteed. The harmonised EN standards are an indication of how the objectives of the EU directive can be met, but they are not mandatory. And especially not outside of the EU.
Instead, specifications differ between countries and a design in accordance with the Machinery Directive with the corresponding CE marking is not enough to be able to use a machine or an individual product everywhere in the world – even if a high level of safety is achieved in the EU in itself: meaning that if an Italian machine builder wants to send a machine to South Korea, they must first deal with the national requirements in South Korea, while a delivery to Brazil requires dealing with the national specifications there (NR Norma Regulamentadora e.g. NR-12 “Machinery Safety”). In 2003, the Chinese government introduced mandatory certification and marking called China Compulsory Certificate (CCC) for selected products. In this case, the machine builder should check whether the relevant components have this certification in addition to dealing with the Chinese specifications (GB standards) (see interview, page 5). An efficient and legally compliant handling thus becomes a balancing act for global companies.
Expertly standardised
As an “Ambassador for Safety”, Pilz has decades of intensive experience with current standards and is happy to shoulder this burden for its customers. Pilz has established itself globally with 42 subsidiaries and 17 sales partners and can provide local support as an independent partner when implementing normative specifications in the individual countries. Experts from Pilz are actively helping to shape around 100 product and application standards in almost 80 standards committees, allowing them to keep a finger on the pulse. This knowledge is also reflected in the services and the training courses within the international Pilz training portfolio. In the absence of official standards, Pilz engages with users, associations, authorities and research institutes in order to collectively develop appropriate safety standards.
“An increasing number of our customers are asking for our help with regard to the requirements of the new national UKCA marking from Great Britain,” explains Arndt Christ, Vice President Customer Support International. “Together with our local subsidiary, we can act as a national representative and provide competent support in the process of achieving UKCA conformity as well as in the event of problems with local market surveillance authorities.” Depending on the task, the scope of support can include risk assessment, drafting a safety concept and international conformity assessment services. Pilz usually puts together an international team of experts for this purpose which is made up of domestic contact partners for the customer, specialists from Pilz in the corresponding countries and, where applicable, an international project manager.
Together these members achieve the ideal world previously imagined: The machinery can be put into operation in the respective target country in compliance with the required conformity assessment procedures and the national standards valid there. The starting point for this is simply making contact with your local Pilz representative.
Wealth of standards experience
Pilz, as a global provider of products, systems and services for automation technology that offers the highest safety for man, machinery and the environment, places the highest priority on meeting guidelines and standards that apply around the world for the widest variety of requirements and industries, even for their own products. Another argument in favour of choosing to rely on the support offered by Pilz.
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