Some folks in machine safety are off learning about European standards like IEC 60204, IEC 62061, and the recently updated ISO 13849-1. These standards talk about the safe guarding of machines and use terms like; SIL (Safety Integrity Level), PL (Performance Level), MTTF_D  (Mean Time To Fail dangerous), SIL Claim Limit to mention a few! All of these terms are very deterministic and involve some levels of mathematical calculations. It’s as though the European industry might be shifting away from a task based qualitative risk analysis process using categories of hazards (B,1,2,3,4) to a completely quantitative mathematical approach.

Many end user’s and OEM’s here in the US are typically focused at our national consensus standards and OSHA regulations for compliance to machine safety requirements. These regulations occasionally “informatively” reference European standards and generally don’t require compliance to European standards. Is anyone aware of any of these European requirements emerging within the collaborative standards requirements of the US? What is your opinion? What are you doing to address these requirements?