“More precise specifications help”

Mr Bukowski, what, to your mind, is the biggest change?

Jürgen Bukowski: It is not one big change, but rather the sum of all the changes. For example, design spec­i­fi­ca­tions were refined, require­ments for appli­ca­tion soft­ware and the man­age­ment of func­tional safety were expanded and the val­i­da­tion spec­i­fi­ca­tions were adapted.

For the deter­mi­na­tion of the required per­for­mance level (PLr), there are now refined spec­i­fi­ca­tions for the risk para­me­ters. In order to be able to pre­vent haz­ards and the prob­a­bility of their occur­rence, in future man­u­fac­turers and oper­a­tors will have to define in more detail, among other things: At what speed does the hazard occur? Or: What options are there for avoiding the hazard? What prac­tical expe­ri­ences with Safety have already been had with regard to the process? Is the machine oper­ated by trained and suit­able oper­a­tors? With or without super­vi­sion? Small but impor­tant details have been added here.

What does this mean for machine manufacturers and operators?

They are required to reassess safety func­tions. In addi­tion, the final draft stip­u­lates a safety require­ments spec­i­fi­ca­tion (SRS) for the clear descrip­tion of safety func­tions – with doc­u­men­ta­tion of all details that are required for safe and cor­rect per­for­mance. The doc­u­men­ta­tion can also help oper­a­tors to achieve a clear under­standing of all safety func­tions in their machine during reg­ular inspec­tions and checks.

That sounds like a lot of work …

If you are doing it for the first time – yes. With a little sup­port and prac­tice, how­ever, many spec­i­fi­ca­tions can be applied again. Machine man­u­fac­turers also have more flex­i­bility. Every safety func­tion can be imple­mented through the com­bi­na­tion of sev­eral sub­sys­tems. These are either avail­able as sub­sys­tems already val­i­dated by the man­u­fac­turer or are designed as new sub­systems by the machine man­u­fac­turer or inte­grator.

When is it necessary to act?

It is far from clear whether there will be a tran­si­tion period after pub­li­ca­tion of the stan­dard in the EU Offi­cial Journal and if so, how long this might be. For this reason, design engi­neers and oper­a­tors should swiftly address the planned changes. The ear­lier, the better.