Machinery's design. Integrate safety and health during the functional specification

Within quite strict regulatory boundaries, designing a machine covers many aspects in order to offer the future user a machine that meets both the specific technical characteristics and also the safety criteria; among these aspects are functional analysis and risk analysis. In industry today, these aspects are often juxtaposed in the design process.

Therefore, it appears important for the designer to endeavour to anticipate the work of the operator in the future context of use and thus to anticipate the potential “risk scenarios” based on the following three principles:
· using risk analysis to make a more in-depth functional analysis;
· supplementing the purely functional approach with an operator-centric approach; and
· developing the partnership between the designer and the user.

The work conducted by Cetim and INRS through various case studies is seeking to show the advantage, both for the designer and for the user, of incorporating safety and health as early as possible into drafting of the functional specifications. Combining risk analysis with functional analysis makes it possible to:
· incorporate safety and health as early as possible in the design process (resulting in machinery that conforms and that is safe);
· pool the functional analysis data with the risk analysis data (procuring a gain in terms of methodology); and
· incorporate the activity of the operator into a functional approach (procuring a better match between design and use).