What’s the situation with CE?

Some of the key changes in the Machinery Reg­u­la­tion not only include manda­tory secu­rity mea­sures and the added rel­e­vance of soft­ware, but also new con­for­mity assess­ment routes. New, for example, are six machine cat­e­gories listed under “poten­tially high risk machinery” (including with regard to arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence), where a noti­fied body must be involved in declaring con­for­mity. The Machinery Reg­u­la­tion also defines more detailed pro­vi­sions regarding sig­nif­i­cant changes on a machine.

Updated Pilz training and services from 2024

“The cur­rent Machinery Direc­tive is the most fre­quently used ref­er­ence in our existing training”, says Jürgen Bukowski, Inter­na­tional Ser­vices Group at Pilz. “Obvi­ously we will work with TÜV Nord to adapt our port­folio as soon as pos­sible, so that our cus­tomers world­wide are well pre­pared for the new require­ments of the Machinery Reg­u­la­tion.” From 2024, training for CE marking in par­tic­ular, such as the CECE qual­i­fi­ca­tion – Cer­ti­fied Expert in CE Marking – or CMSE – Cer­ti­fied Machinery Safety Expert – will pro­vide the rel­e­vant new exper­tise needed to accom­plish CE marking in accor­dance with the EU Machinery Reg­u­la­tion. Pilz will also offer the first up-to-date CECE recer­ti­fi­ca­tion courses.

Training courses include:

• CMSE® — Cer­ti­fied Machinery Safety Expert
• CECE — Cer­ti­fied Expert in CE Marking
• CECE — Recer­ti­fi­ca­tion
• CEFS – Cer­ti­fied Expert in Func­tional Safety
• Basis of CE Marking
• Intro­duc­tion to Machinery Safety
• Fun­da­men­tals of machinery safety

“We want our cus­tomers to be well pre­pared for the forth­coming chal­lenges, and to know which changes affect them specif­i­cally, so that they can take timely mea­sures to comply with the Machinery Reg­u­la­tion”, says Matthias Wimmer, Appli­ca­tion Stan­dards Spe­cialist at Pilz. “That’s why, as part of our risk assess­ments and val­i­da­tions, we will cover the new tech­nical require­ments and dis­cuss poten­tial solu­tions with our cus­tomers. Because the sooner you deal with the Machinery Reg­u­la­tion the better.”

That’s because: despite the final date for con­ver­sion being 2027, it is already impor­tant to plan processes and long-term projects accord­ingly, so that machinery is designed to take future require­ments into account. The oblig­a­tion for product tracing with cor­re­sponding after­care, such as secu­rity patches for example, also requires prepa­ra­tion.

New service and training offer for Industrial Security

“The field of Indus­trial Secu­rity is a par­tic­u­larly big chal­lenge. To enable our cus­tomers to over­come this chal­lenge, we use our expe­ri­ence from the field of Safety to help them, with spe­cific ser­vices and training for Indus­trial Secu­rity”, says Matthias Wimmer.

This year Pilz intro­duced the new expert course CESA – Cer­ti­fied Expert for Secu­rity in Automa­tion, to enable cus­tomers to imple­ment appro­priate secu­rity mea­sures effec­tively on their own machinery, in accor­dance with IEC 62443 “Indus­trial com­mu­ni­ca­tion net­works — Net­work and system secu­rity”. How­ever, with the new Indus­trial Secu­rity Con­sulting Ser­vice, experts from Pilz come on site and check plant and machinery, from the pro­tec­tion require­ments analysis through to root and branch ver­i­fi­ca­tion where secu­rity weak­nesses are con­cerned. So bring on the key date of 20 Jan­uary 2027.