Machinery Safety Standards in INDIA

Background

To understand machinery safety standards in India we have to learn how regulatory and legal framework formulated. In India , Ministry of Labor and Employment is responsible for health and safety and welfare of the workers. They have formulated National Policy on Safety, Health and Environment at workplace. On this policy, Government body Directorate General Factory Advice and Service
Institute (DGFASLI) Formulated “Factories Act“.

Other Regulatory Frame work is Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) .which formulates Indian standards for machinery safety. These standards are formulated and published by technical committee which consist of all the stakeholders.

Another Ministry , Ministry of Heavy Industries and Public Enterprise has introduced national capital goods policy in 2016 outlining minimum acceptable safety, environmental impact standards, and performance requirements for machinery.

In this article I will discuss machinery standards published by BIS

Machinery Safety Standards by BIS

The BIS has various technical committees, most relevant for this study are the Mechanical Engineering Department MED 40 Safety of Machinery, Electrotechnical Department ETD 44 Safety of Machinery- Electrotechnical Aspects, and Chemical Department CHD 8 Occupational Safety and Health.

A more recent committee under Mechanical Engineering Department, MED 40: Safety of Machinery has been established and mirrors the International Organization for Standardization’s ISO/TC 199 Safety of Machinery. The BIS committee has finalized 32 Indian Standards (under print) which are an adoption of the corresponding ISO standard.

BIS published Machinery Safety Standard

• IS 16819:2018 Safety of machinery — General principles for design — Risk assessment and risk reduction
• IS 16810 (part 1):2018 Safety of machinery –Safety related parts of control systems — Part 1: General principles for design
• IS 16810 (part 2):2018 Safety of machinery –Safety related parts of control systems — Part 2: Validation
• IS 16818:2018: Safety of machinery — Emergency stop function – Principles for design
• IS 16817: 2018: Safety of machinery — Two-hand control devices — Functional aspects and design principles
• IS 16816: 2019: Safety of machinery — Minimum gaps to avoid crushing of parts of the human body
• IS 16815: 2019: Safety of machinery — Positioning of safeguards concerning the approach speeds of parts of the human body
• IS 16814: 2018 Safety of machinery — Safety distances to prevent hazard zones from being reached by upper and lower limbs
• IS 16813: 2019: Safety of machinery — Prevention of unexpected start-up
• IS 16812: 2018: Safety of machinery — Interlocking devices associated with guards — Principles for design and selection
• IS 16811: 2018 : Safety of machinery — Guards — General requirements for the design and construction of fixed and movable guards

On the next posts I will discuss each Machinery safety standard in brief, you can find the all Machinery Safety Standards in India here.