Instruction Handbook: Safety Related Information for Assemblies of Machinery

May 16, 2016

Who likes writing manuals? Exactly.

So we should give some thought to what needs to be provided in a manual beforehand to avoid having to repeat the process in reverse further down the line.

Often a machine is in fact an assembly of smaller machines, whether they be standalone or machines in their own right, partly complete machines requiring assembly, safety components, or lifting accessories. The final machine assembly will inevitably include components declared to other directives such as LVD, EMCD etc. and then some parts which are not covered a CE marking directive at all.

So, when starting any CE conformity task you should have defined what the machine is. It sounds like stating the obvious but you might be surprised to know that the majority of machines we encounter for the purposes of CE have not yet been well defined (or perhaps you are not that surprised at all). The conformity planning process is covered in another article in more detail but needless to say it will require information for use to be provided in the technical file.

Normally I now point to a standard which is on the European official journal. However, the following extract is the best explanation/summary of what an instruction handbook should include:

BS EN 82079-1:2012 5.5.4 Safety-related information for industrial plants Safety-related information shall be provided with each component. Where an assembly of components might produce additional potential hazards, the relevant safety-related information shall be only provided at the relevant level of assembly. When integrating components to higher assemblies, safety-related information should be provided only at that level of aggregation where they occur.

We will be extending this article with extracts and comments related to instruction hand books over time. Please do get in touch if you have questions or comments.