“Unique in scope and quality”

Mr Bukowski, what are the duties of the worldwide consulting group?

The con­sulting group is part of Global Ser­vices. Our team has three main tasks. Cen­trally, we look after the devel­op­ment of con­sulting ser­vices for the Pilz Group world­wide. Then we have around 400 ser­vice engi­neers in our 42 national sub­sidiaries who take care of imple­men­ta­tion.

Sec­ondly, our team advises Pilz’s global cus­tomers, for example, branded goods man­u­fac­turers with over a hun­dred pro­duc­tion sites world­wide. They want machinery that is safe and com­plies with the stan­dards and legal require­ments – and not just in one country. Global players like these want an inter­na­tion­ally con­sis­tent approach, whether that be tech­nical spec­i­fi­ca­tions, pro­ce­dures or training of employees.

And finally, we coor­di­nate the work of the Pilz ser­vice hubs estab­lished world­wide. These deliver con­sulting ser­vices to coun­tries where we don’t have our own sales and ser­vice com­pany.

Consulting is part of Pilz’s services portfolio. What is the connection to the other services?

Con­sulting is embedded in our ser­vices port­folio for the whole machine life­cycle. When com­pa­nies con­tact us, at first it is usu­ally a matter of defining cor­po­rate stan­dards. Com­pa­nies need an insight into the jungle of require­ments and direc­tives. Ini­tially we help to estab­lish their own stan­dards, in order to have a common under­standing.

This is fol­lowed by training and spe­cific spe­cialist training, to bring all employees up to the same level of knowl­edge. Then we advise cus­tomers and analyse machinery safety tasks that they are unable to resolve them­selves. Our engi­neering ser­vice is avail­able if any defects are iden­ti­fied or opti­mi­sa­tions are required.

Which consulting services does Pilz offer specifically?

I’d like to high­light the con­sulting offers “Machinery Safety Eval­u­a­tion” and “Machinery Accep­tance”. With Machinery Safety Eval­u­a­tion the task is to scru­ti­nise existing machinery – when a com­pany takes over an existing pro­duc­tion site, for example. The avail­able fleet of machinery must be inspected for defects and for com­pli­ance with legal and cor­po­rate stan­dards. The state machinery can be in con­stantly sur­prises you.

The second task is Machinery Accep­tance. All machines that are pur­chased from new must meet the spec­i­fi­ca­tions, of course, and have an EC dec­la­ra­tion of con­for­mity, for example. In this case we are often already on site at the machine builder’s. That’s because it is easier to rec­tify any defects there, than when the machinery is already built into the pro­duc­tion plant.

In future the issue of security will also play an important role. How are you dealing with this?

In the field of safety we can assume defined pro­tec­tion goals and work with estab­lished clas­si­fi­ca­tions and prob­a­bil­i­ties. That makes our work easier.

Dealing with secu­rity is more dif­fi­cult because pro­tec­tion goals can vary. Some machines or processes are more crit­ical than others, and require more pro­tec­tion. With secu­rity, com­pa­nies can deter­mine what they want to pro­tect. That makes dealing with secu­rity more com­plex. In this case it is even more impor­tant for com­pa­nies to define their require­ments and pro­tec­tion goals at the start. Here too, our spe­cial Indus­trial Secu­rity ser­vices pro­vide sup­port with a Pro­tec­tion Require­ments Analysis, as well as a more exten­sive Risk Analysis to examine and increase cyber­se­cu­rity. By the way, Indus­trial Secu­rity will be an impor­tant com­po­nent of the EC Dec­la­ra­tion of Con­for­mity once the EU Machinery Reg­u­la­tion applies from Jan­uary 2027.

How does Pilz manage to deliver services worldwide to the same quality?

We con­tin­u­ally mon­itor what is hap­pening world­wide in the field of machinery safety. We work closely with the Pilz Stan­dards Group, which deals with stan­dards for Pilz world­wide and actively par­tic­i­pates in many stan­dards and stan­dard­i­s­a­tion com­mit­tees. We process the inno­va­tions or changes and pre­pare internal training and white papers to share the infor­ma­tion with national sub­sidiaries. They, in turn, are experts on national spec­i­fi­ca­tions and know the local par­tic­u­lar­i­ties.

We use a world­wide, uni­form method­ology and stan­dard­ised processes for internal knowl­edge transfer. Our global ser­vices process is cer­ti­fied to ISO 9001. This way we manage to always stay one step ahead and can sup­port our cus­tomers at an early stage.

How does our consulting offer benefit our customers?

Cus­tomers can be cer­tain that, with Pilz, they are always on the safe side. We relieve them of the burden involved in guar­an­teeing safe, com­pliant machinery. Many of our con­sul­tants are also trainers, and vice-versa. This means that we can approach our tasks with a high degree of prac­tical rel­e­vance. And finally, we are in a posi­tion to sup­port com­pa­nies of all sizes to the same level of quality across the world, over the whole machine life­cycle. I think that’s unique in scope and quality.