Principles, Standards and Implementation

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Standards

Introduction

This section provides a list of some of the typical international and national standards that are relevant to machinery safety. It is not intended to form an exhaustive list but rather to give an insight on what machinery safety issues are the subject of standardization.

This section should be read in conjunction with the Regulation section.

The countries of the world are working towards global harmonization of standards. This is especially evident in the area of machine safety. Global safety standards for machinery are governed by two organizations: ISO and IEC. Regional and country standards are still in existence and continue to support local requirements but in many countries there has been a move toward using the international standards produced by ISO and IEC.

For example, the EN (European Norm) standards are used throughout the EEA countries. All new EN standards are aligned with, and in most cases have identical text with ISO and IEC standards.

IEC covers electrotechnical issues and ISO covers all other issues. Most industrialized countries are members of IEC and ISO. Machinery safety standards are written by working groups comprised of experts from many of the world’s industrialized counties.

In most countries standards can be regarded as voluntary whereas regulations are legally mandatory. However standards are usually used as the practical interpretation of the regulations. Therefore the worlds of standards and regulations are closely interlinked.