A survey of instructions supplied with machinery with respect to noise and the requirements of the Machinery Directive.

A survey gathered the contributions of 14 European countries and was initiated by the “ADCO Machinery” group through the NOMAD project (Noise Machine Directive). The survey aimed to analyze the noise content information (emission level, risk management) which should be provided by the machinery manufacturers in their instructions. These data, which are requested by the European directives, may allow the purchaser to be informed about the noise risk and to know how to manage the risk when the machine is on production. The results show that the content of more than 1500 instructions analyzed (related to 40 machine families and 800 different manufacturers) is not the right one for 80 % of the samples. Indeed, some of (or all) the requested numerical values for the sound emission are missing. In addition, when these values are given, very often, they cannot be linked to machinery operating conditions or measurements codes. This leads to a lack of traceability or credibility of these values. Lack of competence in acoustics or lack of motivation of the manufacturers, ignorance of the purchasers or difficulties of the public authorities to survey the market for this specific risk, the reasons of failure should lead the different actors to improve this situation. Information, training, awareness, improvement of the standard management, display simplification: several action are planned in order to be able to manage the noise risk at the source level and to be able to really “buy quiet”.