Today’s industrial enterprises are moving in a global setting: Production sites are shifted worldwide, machines and plants exported to different regions the world over. Therefore, compliance with standards is just as much a crucial factor behind the success of globally operating manufacturers as the technical safety design of their machines and plants themselves. Production facilities are becoming increasingly more complex; cycle rates are rising; and the functionalities of the machines are becoming more and more challenging. On the part of machine manufacturers and operators, this results in demands for more efficiency or, respectively, production support as well as the easiest operability possible.
Development of standards: “Recipes” give way to “home-made” creations What makes the task of coping with the aspects of both standardization and those of machine technology more difficult for design engineers is the fact that both areas influence each other mutually. new sensor solutions – especially with respect to electro-sensitive protective equipment and new control designs – permit new concepts regarding machines and plants that significantly enhance not only their performance and availability but also their operating ergonomics. accordingly, the standardization processes follow the increasingly shortening product development cycles. In this context, the trend is toward system standards that offer solutions less in the shape of “recipes” but rather aim at agreement on specific protective goals. For the design engineer, this means that concrete solutions are superseded by the challenge, but also the opportunity, of reacting flexibly to new technologies and trends. For safety experts such as SICK, this entails serving the increasing need for information in engineering departments in a cooperative, competent, and comprehensive way, e.g. in the context of EN ISO 13849-1 at the press manufacturer Schuler in Göppingen.
Schuler: Updating standards with the design engineers on site In order to recognize early on the opportunities offered by the new standards situation from 2010 onward and to put them into practice constructively – in the double sense of the word –, the Schuler Group headquartered in Göppingen, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of presses, has decided in favor of a pragmatic path. together with the safety experts from SICK, a compact training program was carried out initially at the Group’s individual locations. thus, based on specific press applications and their technical safety adjustment to the contents of EN ISO 13849-1, in the context of several workshops it was possible to arrive jointly at a practically oriented introduction to the complex topic of “Performance Level & Co.” together with the experts from SICK, design engineers from the different technical departments examined which influences arise with respect to different safety functions such as ram locking systems, gripper rail protection, or “speed monitoring in settingup mode.” In terms of the time involved in connection with the new standard, a differentiated picture emerged: Whereas using already “pre-certified” safety blocks, such as light grids, in particular allows a simple and thus time-saving verification of safety functions, more complex problems require a clearly structured approach in order to reach the goal. the upshot: EN ISO 13849-1 ranks among the most important standardization projects in the area of machine safety in recent years – by 1 January 2010 at the latest, every manufacturer of machines and safety components will be affected by its consequences.
Practically oriented training courses and workshops that take into consideration the new “norm”-ality will provide design engineers with new impulses to combine trends in machine and technical safety with one another flexibly, thus becoming even more competitive internationally – especially since European safety standardization will continue to serve as a model, being adopted by many countries and regions worldwide.