NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.

A2.1 Risk Assessment Developments in the USA- Taubitz MA

This presentation provides a brief look at the history and proliferation of risk assessment in the United States. The US military developed one of the earliest and most pervasive risk assessment approaches contained in MIL-STD-882D. The chemical industry has also been involved for many years. Aviation, medical devices, semi-conductor and robotics industries, along with OSHA have all adopted risk assessment for specific applications.

Even with all of the uncoordinated effort in risk assessment implementation, much is common among the various methods.

Special emphasis will be given to the risk assessment activities coming from the US machine tool industry. In 1995, the Machine Tool Safety Standards Committee commissioned a subcommittee to develop guidelines for risk assessment that could be integrated within the family of ANSI B11 general industry safety standards. The team is nearing completion on a report entitled ANSI B11 Technical Report #3 (TR3) "Risk Assessment - A guideline to estimate, evaluate, and reduce risks associated with machine tools." This methodology improves upon the existing EN 1050 methodology used in Europe because it requires suppliers and users to identify tasks as well as hazards. Identifying task-hazard pairs has been proven to identify more hazards than the traditional approach.

TR3 may well become the benchmark for risk assessment in this country and world because it harmonizes with Europe and builds upon the best, proven methods in use today. The general approach is shown below:

. Task and hazard identification

. Risk estimation

. Risk reduction determination

. Safeguards

. Verification of risk reduction

. Documentation

The presentation notes that there is no one "best" method.

A2.2 Perspectives on International Machinery Risk Assessment-Raafat H

In May '85 the EU Ministers agreed to a New Approach to Technical Harmonisation and Standards to overcome the problem of trade between partners. The Machinery Safety Directive is one of the Directives and sets out Essential Health and Safety Requirements EHSR's for machinery which must be met before machinery is placed on the market anywhere within the European Community.

EHSR's are expressed in general terms and it is intended that the European Harmonised Standards should fill in the detail so that machinery designers and suppliers have clear guidance on how to achieve conformity with the Directive."

This has fundamentally changed the approach to the prevention machinery accidents in the workplace. In the place of reactive and prescriptive legislation and standards, the EU Directives represent a remarkable breakthrough in risk-based approach to machinery and work equipment safety.

The crucial role of risk assessment in Europe affects both machinery suppliers and users. The European harmonised standards EN 292-1 and EN 1050 outline the role of risk assessment for designers to identify hazards and hazardous events throughout the life cycle of machinery.

A process for incorporating the European machinery safety standards within ISO/IEC is currently underway. The American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is also considering the risk-based approach to machinery safety.

This paper highlights some serious shortcomings with understanding and demonstrating compliance with the EU risk-based approach to machinery safety and raws attention to the benefits of the approach adopted by ANSI-TR3.

A2.3 Risk Management for Machinery-related Injury Prevention-Russell J

In order to perform thorough machinery risk assessments and develop cost effective control options, it is essential to have reliable risk management data. This session will discuss the various types of financial and technical information that should be obtained from various sources before conducting risk assessments.

Specific examples of machine injuries will be discussed, along with types of information that can be provided by various sources such as your insurance carrier, professional safety organizations and governmental agencies. Companies may track direct costs that include medical treatments, compensation benefits and insurance premiums. In some situations, organizations may not be calculating indirect costs such as loss of production, training of substitute employees, machine repairs, accident investigation, etc.

Obtaining and tracking all of these expenses assist in determining priorities for which risk assessments should be conducted, what engineering and administrative controls should be completed, and calculating potential savings and rates of return on investments. Whether your organization is fully insured or self-insured, this session will cover important issues directly related to the success of your safety program and financial security of the company.

A2.4 Developing Teaching Aids for Machine Risk Reduction with Safeguarding-Roudebush CJ

As the complexity of machine safeguarding increases due to increased reliance on automated manufacturing systems, the need for providing effective teaching aids on understanding and maintaining the desired level of effectiveness for safeguarding also increases. Such teaching aids need to address topics such as: safety related control circuit reliability, integration of different machine safeguarding technologies into a single manufacturing system and proper set-up / use of machine safeguarding technologies. It is the objective of this presentation to provide an overview of the teaching aids and "hands-on" laboratory activities developed for teaching machine safeguarding technologies at the post secondary level.

This presentation will: a) define the objectives of the machine safeguarding teaching aids and curriculum materials, b) provide an overview of how to utilize a programmable logic controller to construct a power press safeguarding simulator, c) explain how electrical relays can be utilized to teach safety related control circuits, d) provide an overview of how to construct a pneumatic energy system lockout simulator to teach machine specific lockout procedures, and e) provide an overview of how to use a digital timing mechanism to teach the concept of light curtain set-back distances.

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