CE coordination for process plants

Our CE marking expert Manfred Schulte has published a guest article in the CITplus and presents the possible tasks of a CE coordinator based on a practical example of a stirring unit:

The Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC (MRL) regulates the placing on the market and putting into service of machinery, partly completed machinery and products assimilated to machinery (e.g. safety components and lifting accessories) in the European Economic Area.

Entirety of machines

Placing on the market” means making a machine or partly completed machinery available on the market for the first time with a view to its distribution or use, while “putting into service” means the first use of a machine for its own intended purpose (“own manufacture”).

The MRL also regulates a so-called “totality of machinery” under the broad term “machinery”. According to the national interpretation in the interpretation paper of the Federal Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (BMAS), in order to constitute a “totality of machinery”, machinery and/or partly completed machinery must be interlinked in terms of production and safety (e.g. by pipelines, material transfer points, control/safety technology).

In the practical application of the term “assembly of machinery”, the question often arises in the case of large industrial plants (e.g. metallurgical plants, power plants or plants of the chemical industry) as to what extent such plants are subject to the requirements of the MRL as “assembly of machinery”.

In the case of large industrial plants, the production-related connection can often be affirmed, but usually not the safety-related connection. In this case, such installations as a whole are not subject to the requirements of the MRL.

The facts regarding the application of the MRL to industrial plant are referred to in the European Commission’s “Guide to the application of the Machinery Directive 2006/42/EC”, which states that the definition “assembly of machinery” does not necessarily have to be applied to a complete industrial plant in its entirety.

However, it is pointed out that most industrial installations can usually be divided into individual units of machinery in the sense of homogeneous functional units, for each of which the requirements of the MRL are to be applied.

Examples: Raw material unloading and feeding, filling, processing, packaging and loading units.

You can read the entire article here.
Hereyou can download the article in PDF format.

Do you have questions about CE coordination? Please feel free to contact us:

Manfred Schulte
weyer group | horst weyer und partner gmbh
Düren | Deutschland
Tel.: +49 2421 – 69 09 10
E-Mail: m.schulte@weyer-gruppe.com