Particularly safe factories and production lines sometimes go years without serious accidents. It takes a great deal of preparation and commitment, though, to achieve such high levels of safety.
Making sure the essentials are all in place will form a strong safety foundation to build on. Learn to recognize the role and importance of each of the following six building blocks and you can help make any manufacturing environment safer.
- Training
No one can hope to be as safe as possible in an inherently dangerous environment without appropriate training. Fortunately, well-established standards ensure that most manufacturing workers receive significant amounts of safety training.
Going beyond such basics, though, can pay even larger dividends. Whether for companies that specialize in Component Manufacturing for Natural Gas Suppliers or businesses that produce industrial gearboxes, there are always specialized issues that need to be accounted for to ensure safety.
Making sure that workers get retrained as needed is just as important as having them take courses the first time around. Safety training should be seen as an asset to everyone involved with a manufacturing operation, from owners and managers to entry-level workers.
- Communication
A lack of communication can easily turn a minor issue into a major hazard. Workers should always feel that they can alert safety managers and others to problems that need to be addressed.
Developing ways of enabling clear, effective safety-related communication can take more effort than might be assumed. It will generally be necessary, for instance, to account for how environmental issues like noise and physical obstacles could interfere.
- Adherence to Best Practices
Experts have devoted countless hours to figure out the best, safest ways to handle manufacturing-related duties of all kinds. There are also plenty of more general best practices that are just as relevant to manufacturing as to any other type of activity.
For these standards to be of any use in a given situation, they have to be respected at all times. Best practices need to be recognized as not just helpful, but as the only acceptable ways to carry out the duties, they apply to.
- Regular Maintenance and Cleanup
Poorly maintained machines or simple spills can create serious safety hazards where none previously existed. Regular, effective maintenance keeps major problems from developing, while equally diligent cleaning makes dangerous slips and falls less likely.
The importance of such activities sometimes gets lost in the face of regulatory requirements and other details. The safety-related importance of maintenance and cleaning should be respected at all times.
- Lockout Procedures
Many dangerous machines include lockout systems that make potentially devastating accidents less likely. Unfortunately, workers sometimes develop ways to subvert these safeguards or else fail to use them properly.
While a well-designed lockout should be difficult to defeat, that should not be considered sufficient. Managers need to monitor the usage of such systems to make sure they are always performing as intended.
- Plan for Emergencies
Not planning for emergencies is a sure way to allow avoidable problems to manifest. Every manufacturing operation needs to have a full range of appropriate emergency response plans in place at all times.
That will do away with the need for the kinds of on-the-spot solutions that so often put human beings in danger. Effective emergency planning can even reveal ways of making a manufacturing environment safer.
Safety Can Never be Taken for Granted
Become familiar with these six cornerstones of manufacturing safety and you can help prevent accidents. Safety must always be taken seriously if it is to be emphasized at all.
