A Practical Guide to the Machinery Directive: Update 4

It is now more than two years since the Machinery Directive became mandatory for all machinery supplied within the European economic area. During this period a large amount of experience has been developed in dealing with the many implementation issues of the Machinery Directive, as well as the effects on machinery manufacturers of other new approach directives, such as the EMC, Low Voltage, and Simple Pressure Vessel Directives. In this update, the original step-by-step approach to the Machinery Directive is revisited. Whilst the basic procedure remains the same, more information and explanation has been added to reflect some of our implementation experiences. The simple approach still remains central to meeting the requirements of the Machinery Directive. The approach has even been extended to include aspects of other new approach directives, a subject that will be included in a future update. Wilst this guide remains focused on the Machinery Directive, we have included the legal texts of other directives that are of importance to machinery manufacturers. This issue contains the integrated texts for both the simple Pressure Vessels and Construction Products Directives.
We recommend that readers examine the scope of these two directive to determine whether or not to apply to their machinery, or parts of their machinery. In the next update we will be focusing on the developments in the harmonized standards in support of the Machinery Directive, particularly as a number of these have been generated and are awaiting the final stage of transposing into the national standards systems.