Machine Safeguarding Training
Over the last 100 years, as the use of machinery has increased in the workplace, so has the number of machine-related injuries.
According to the National Safety Council, injuries such as crushed hands and arms, severed fingers and blindness now account for a significant number of all workplace injuries.
In many cases, the injuries are serious enough to affect employees’ ability to continue to work - sometimes, permanently. In addition to the costs to injured workers, there are additional costs to employers: medical payments, workers’ compensation, lost work days and supervisory time.
One important means of keeping the workplace safe is machine safeguarding, which refers to specific controls designed to prevent employees from coming into contact with equipment that could cause injury. By understanding where the hazards exist in your workplace, you can help ensure that proper safeguards are in place to protect employees. In addition, all employees who work with potentially hazardous machinery or operations need to understand how machine safeguards work and how to use them to prevent injury.
To some, safeguarding may seem unnecessary. They would argue that injuries should be prevented by common sense. But in fact, many factors can lead to injuries around unguarded machines:
- Inattentiveness or boredom
- Emotional issues, such as anger
- Haste
- Distractions
- Unsafe procedures
- Production pressures
There is also the “No one would be foolish enough to...” syndrome - that is, the belief that if a hazard is evident, no one will get hurt. In reality, given the right set of circumstances, any employee can make a mistake that might lead to injury.
In sum, machine safeguards prevent any action caused by one of these factors from leading to an injury. Machine safeguarding attempts to take the human factor out of the situation. And the savings from preventing even one serious injury far outweigh the costs of providing the safeguarding.
The Blueprints for Safety© Machine Safeguarding Program is designed to provide a step-by-step approach to developing a machine safeguarding program for your company. Creating such a program will help you understand the following:
- Why safeguarding is important
- What types of mechanical and non-mechanical hazards exist in your workplace
- What types of actions may pose hazards
- How safeguards should be used to reduce the hazards
- How employees should be trained to understand the use of safeguards The outcomes of your machine safeguarding program will be as follow:
- Identification of the mechanical and other hazards posed by the equipment and machinery in your workplace
- Selection and use of proper safeguards
- Well-trained employees who know how to protect themselves from machine-related hazards
- Compliance with OSHA requirements
By creating a program for machine safeguarding in the workplace, you can help everyone understand the importance of working in ways that reduce the risk of injury, control the costs associated with those injuries and increase everyone’s safety.
