Machine Safety and Risk Assessment in Manufacturing

A global automotive supplier needed to enhance their global machine safety program and develop safety risk assessments of their equipment. The risk assessments would identify machine guarding gaps relevant to legislative and corporate requirements. The client requested Antea Group’s assistance in developing the risk assessments for international standards and to capture the data in client-identified software.

Antea Group created a machine safety risk assessment to meet ISO EN 12100 (Safety of Machinery), ISO EN 13849 (Safety of machinery -- Safety-related parts of control systems) standards, the European Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC and the Chilean governmental standard.  

Antea Group was able to work with the client's engineers to conduct an analysis of the machine guarding requirements and the electrical control system and components to create a risk assessment that identified and documented potential safety hazards of a large robotic tire delivery system.  

Risk levels were categorized based on the ISO standards and electrical safety controls were evaluated using systems. Risk mitigation alternatives were identified and subsequently reduced the risk to acceptable levels.

Utilizing the Inogen Alliance, Antea Group was able to provide technical staff on site in Chile to verify the risk mitigation and functionality of the control systems. As a result, travel costs were greatly reduced.  

The result was a risk assessment that identified the initial risks, the risk reduction solutions, and the mitigated risk and the performance levels of the electrical system controls in conformance with the accepted international standards. The client could be sure that they were aware of and appropriately mitigating their risks.

The risk assessment was entered into a client identified software package and was thus available for future use, benchmarking, and reference, saving them time and effort.