Two more years for EN 954-1 – a double take on machinery safety

The EU Commission has decided to prolong the transition period of EN 954-1’s presumption of conformity to the new Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC by two more years. The period of the prolongation has been specified by the Commission until 31 December 2011 and published in the official gazette OJEU C 321 of the European Union. The parallel use of EN 954-1:1996 and EN ISO 13849-1:2008 will continue until the end of the extended transition period. 

Ms. Susanne Kunschert, Director at the safety automation company Pilz points out that “it must be understood, that several Type ‘B’ and ‘C’ standards have been prepared or revised since the listing of EN ISO 13849-1 and EN/IEC 62061. EN 954-1 is explicitly not listed as a standard giving presumption of conformity to safety related parts of control systems. Designers and manufacturers of such machines and equipment will have to select EN ISO 13849-1”.




As EN954-1 is superseded and as the newer standards better reflect state of the art in Machine Safety System design, the Pilz director recommends that machine builders adopt these standards sooner rather than wait until the end of the transition period. In particular OEM designers of new machines with a model life of longer than two years should consider adopting the new standards immediately to avoid the cost of re-design, validation and documentation at the end of the transition period.

Some useful links:

http://www.automation.siemens.com/cd/safety/html_76/produkte/si_normen.htm (Overview on safety standards)
http://www.schneider-electric.de/germany/de/produkte-services/news-produkte-service/newsticker.page?c_filepath=/templatedata/Content/News/data/de/local/automation_control/all-aut-c-news/2009/12/20090916_info-zu-verlaengerungszeitraum-der-EN954-1.xml (FAQ machinery directive, in German)
http://www.vipa.de/de/service/knowledge-base/kb/maschinenrichtlinie/ (FAQ machinery directive, in German)