Machines / Machinery Directive

What exactly does the Mechanical Equipment Guidelines regulate?

The Mechanical equipment guidelines have to be applied since 2009. This assembly of policies has two different objectives: Firstly, it defines the safety and health requirements that rotating equipment must meet in order to guarantee a high level of safety and health protection and, secondly, it aims to ensure the unobstructed use of this machinery on the EU market.

The Mechanical equipment Guidelines are therefore aimed at manufacturers, distributors and importers of machinery, notified parties, committees that standardize the protocols, agencies for health and safety at work, consumer protection, as well as representatives of the national administrative and market surveillance authorities. It thus defines certain terms and related requirements such as:

• All the necessary information for when a single CE-tagging can be carried out for large systems (e.g. production lines) or when each assemble must be considered separately.
• All information regarding new and already existing machinery - In order to decide whether the installation of a new machine in an existing plant requires the (new) complete plant to undergo a conformity assessment procedure again, a risk assessment is explicitly required.
• Safety devices - with regard to design criteria
• Not-completed machinery - Clarification to distinguish between interchangeable equipment and not-completed machinery.
• Electric motors - Classification between low-voltage regulations, machinery-regulations and ATEX-regulations
• Essential health and safety requirements for the design and construction of machinery 
  • Ensurance of the technical services’ quality
  • Basic principles of ergonomics
  • Selection of the control or operating mode
  • Requirements for separating and non-separating safety devices 
  • Operating instructions
  • Conditions for stability

Our approach

• We support you in questions concerning the conformity assessment procedure,
• We conduct workshops
• We help you with arising questions regarding the compliance with the technical standards required for delivering detailed analyses
• Multidisciplinary expertise in the fields of:
  • Steam and pressure
  • Electrical engineering
  • Operational safety
  • Plant and process safety

Your benefits

• impartial third-party assessment
• many years of experience in the safety-related and constructional design of machinery and units 
• target-oriented trouble-solving