Revised European Directive will tighten kit safety net

Suppliers of machinery to the food and drink sector are being urged to take on board new rules taking effect at the end of this year, which place additional responsibilities on them to ensure the safety of kit.

The revised Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC comes into force on December 29. While not introducing radical changes to the Directive it replaces, it does introduce new requirements for suppliers.

Food sector project management firm Lorien Engineering Solutions has urged machine manufacturers, suppliers and importers to take heed of the new legislation. In particular, Lorien warns them that there is no transition period for adopting the new rules.

Lorien compliance consultant Tony Reynolds said: "On the face of it the two Directives appear similar but there are, in fact, some significant technical and administrative changes that will affect all machine manufacturers, systems integrators and those importing machines from outside the EU."

Control systems suppliers are also gearing up to the Directive. Programmable logic control (PLC) supplier Rockwell Automation, for example, is running a series of safety seminars providing practical guidance to users on the legislation and international safety standards for machinery, such as ISO 13849.

Meanwhile, Mitsubishi Electric, which has just expanded its PLC range with the compact FX3G model aimed at building services control, claimed its new control systems comply with the new Directive. It is also extending the capabilities of its equipment, such as making it easier to interrogate PLCs when operators have done things that have caused safety-related problems.

As well as developing PLCs and human machine interfaces (HMIs) that provide different levels of control security and allow incident logs to be simply accessed, Mitsubishi's HMIs can now store operator manuals electronically and capture video of events to provide instantaneous diagnostics.

Mitsubishi business development manager, Hugh Tasker said: "We welcome this new Directive because it encourages people to embrace best practice in terms of security and safety." The ability of equipment to prevent unauthorised access and trace its operators' activity will inevitably become an increasingly important feature of safety for machine operation and product recall purposes and is something that food firms are increasingly interested in, he continued.