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Training brings skills in-house at Panasonic

A Pilz Automation Technology product story

Edited by the Engineeringtalk editorial team May 5, 2004

Pilz Automation Technology has earned itself a reputation as a leading provider of both general and product-specific safety training courses.

Machinery safety is a broad topic that covers everything from formalised risk assessments to the design of safety circuits and the configuration of programmable safety systems.

And getting it right or wrong can make the difference between life and death.

As a result of these factors, machinery safety is not something that can be learned solely through hands-on experience, and self-teaching is neither a wise nor an effective way to gain a working knowledge of the Regulations, standards and safety-related products.

It is no wonder, therefore, that training in machinery safety is becoming so popular.

Some larger companies are sending individuals on training courses so that they can teach the basics to others in-house; other companies are calling in experts to train larger groups.

Furthermore, the training that is required will vary from company to company and from individual to individual, so there is a genuine need for tailored training courses - which can, in fact, be more cost-effective than sending staff on a series of training courses where some of the material is repeated.

Pilz Automation Technology has earned itself a reputation as a leading provider of both general and product-specific courses.

For more than 10 years Pilz has provided machinery safety education and training to industry and is renowned for the effectiveness and quality of its training and support services.

This has been achieved through a number of activities, including machinery safety workshops, safety legislation and technology training, as well as the publication of the "Guide to machinery safety" (now in its 6th edition) and the more recent "Guide to programmable safety systems".

Pilz offers general machinery safety courses on the subject of "Regulations and standards", including a one-day course specifically designed as an introduction to BS EN61508.

Technology-oriented training courses from Pilz cover integrated safety automation with safety relays, programmable safety systems and safety-related fieldbus.

One company that has recently benefited from Pilz training courses is Panasonic.

Gareth Horn, the Engineering Manager at the company's Port Talbot works, organised on-site training for four automation design engineers to bring them up to date with the regulations relating to machinery safety and to ensure that they had the necessary skills and knowledge to design safety-related control circuits.

The need for this training arose because the Port Talbot factory was about to take delivery of a semi-automated cell line for manufacturing small batches of loudspeakers.

Although 70% of the machinery's fundamental design had been done in Japan, it still required modification of the electric control circuits, assembling and CE marking at the UK plant.

In addition to ensuring the safety of the new assembly line, the training also puts the engineers in a better position for designing similar equipment in-house in the future.

Moreover, it is likely that any additional automation design engineers recruited would be given the same training course.

The course was specially configured to incorporate material from three of the most popular Pilz courses.

As such, the Panasonic engineers were taught about the CE marking process, PUWER, the relevant standards and a practical session was included on the design of safety-related control circuits.

Gareth Horn comments: "I had been seeking the right training course for a long time but Pilz was the only provider who could tailor the course to our needs and include the practical elements of circuit design as well as the information about standards and legislation.

Without undergoing the training course, the engineers simply would not have been able to take on the work necessary to get the new machinery assembled and CE marked".