What does it mean to be a machine guarding expert?

A title not self-proclaimed but given by the customer.  It is a person or company that has authoritative and comprehensive knowledge of the machine safety industry.  As skilled trade related to maintenance personnel to work on machines declines, a new workforce plagued with inexperience such as lack of mechanical ability rises, distractions in the environment increases, and training reduces or condenses, industrial manufacturing companies are looking for machine guarding experts to come in and help mitigate machine guarding hazards through engineered solutions.  This would typically demand a company to provide turnkey machine guarding solutions for a multitude of reasons, but mainly for consistency, minimized gaps in multi-supplier handshake responsibilities, and efficiencies in project execution.  However, customers need to understand a key element, which is collaboration.  While machine guarding experts are exposed daily to a large variety of legacy machines and may have even been a machine operator or machinist themselves, they are not machine experts.  The operators of factory machines are the machine experts.  This is where collaboration is critical in a way to develop a cohesive solution between safety, production, and maintenance.  One without the other could have dire consequences in providing a unified solution in reducing hazardous exposures with a focus on minimizing the effects on the operational throughput.