The document provides guidance on machine safety and functional safety. It discusses laws requiring machines to be safe and the importance of safety throughout a machine's lifecycle from design to scrapping. It introduces the Machinery Directive which sets safety standards for machines in the EU. It also discusses functional safety standards like IEC 61508 and ISO 13849-1 which provide methods for determining a machine's required safety integrity level or performance level to reduce risk. The document provides an example of how to assign a SIL level to a safety function based on the potential hazard's severity, exposure frequency and probability of avoiding harm.