To ensure steady high levels of safety for industrial machinery, it is key to keep relevant safety standards constantly updated, taking into account recent developments in technology. For this reason, in a welcome development in the field of machinery safety, CEN Technical Committee 114 'Safety of machinery', just published an updated version of EN ISO 13849-1:2023 'Safety of machinery - Safety-related parts of control systems - Part 1: General principles for design (ISO 13849-1:2023)'.
In particular, the standard specifies a methodology and provides related requirements, recommendations and guidance for the design and integration of safety‐related parts of control systems (SRP/CS) that perform safety functions, including the design of software. The document applies to SRP/CS for high demand and continuous modes of operation including their subsystems, regardless of the type of technology and energy used (e.g. electrical, hydraulic, pneumatic, and mechanical).
The content of the document was reorganized from previous editions to better follow the design and development process of control systems. Among the main changes, it includes new provisions on software safety requirements, on ergonomic aspects of design or on electromagnetic interference (EMI) immunity.
EN ISO 13849-1:2023 is a so-called type-B standard: a standard which deals with horizontal aspects related to machinery safety. As a result, it is expected to be referred to by many future harmonised standards dealing with safety of specific types of machinery.
This standard, developed together with the corresponding ISO/TC 199 'Safety of machinery', addresses the safety requirements of the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC: as such, it will be soon offered to the European Commission for the citation in OJEU for this legislation.
CEN/TC 114’s Secretariat is currently held by DIN, the German national standardization institute.
