TÜV SÜD launches machinery SIL certification service

Paul Laidler, Business Director for Machinery Safety at TÜV SÜD Product Service, said: "If a safety related control function does not have the required integrity, it may fail unexpectedly and the machine will lose function, or worse, injure an operator. Any claim of functional safety for a component, subsystem or system should therefore be independently certified to one of the recognized functional safety standards. Our new certification service will help manufacturers to assure customers that their safety control system will reduce the risk to the required level once installed.”

A SIL is determined primarily from the assessment of three factors, with the highest levels requiring greater compliance with each: 1) improved reliability 2) failure to safety 3) management, systematic techniques, verification and validation.

International standard IEC 61508 (Functional Safety of Electrical/Electronic/Programmable Electronic Safety-related Systems) is the basic functional safety standard applicable to all industries. Both EN 62061 and EN ISO 13849-1 are derived from this generic standard and must be followed to demonstrate compliance with the Machinery Directive. Either standard’s risk assessment process can be used to generate a performance level value, with EN 62061 using Safety Integrity Levels (SIL) and EN ISO 13849-1 using Performance Levels (PL) as measures.