While an increase in production orders is good news for the business, plant floor personnel may see it differently.
The challenges that go along with increased production or a major controls upgrade can put immense pressure on manufacturing managers and their teams. It can disturb regular processes, place extra demand on staff and uncover skills shortages. As such, the risk of injury is especially high during these periods. Although maintaining a production schedule is a primary concern, extra care should be taken to ensure the safety of workers at this time.
Injuries sustained at work can be incredibly damaging, and not just for the injured individual. Your company can incur losses via lowered productivity, equipment and staff replacement costs, first aid supplies, emergency and hospital costs, plus investigation and potential compensation costs.
Prevention and preparation is the best approach to plant safety but it can be hard to plan for unexpected change. To help, we’ve collated some immediate and longer-term actions that will help you secure plant-wide safety during challenging times.
1. Secure plant safety during order spikes
A spike in customer orders can place stress on current staff and systems, especially if the company operates on a work-to-order basis and doesn’t have on-hand resources required to scale up operations. A plant with increased production demand will need more staff, have more products flowing through the line and more machines in use.
To keep up with demand, we frequently see two key safety risks occur:
In this kind of situation, you can counter the risk of injury by employing the following measures.
Fast action: Increase safety messaging in busy periods through verbal reminders, signage and setting targets and rewards for safe practice. Spend the time training temporary staff thoroughly.
Thinking ahead: Having a diversely trained workforce can help reduce risk of safety incidents. Responsibility or job rotation, a safety-orientated approach to job design, and training in different roles can prevent repetitive strain injuries and cover skills shortages in busy times.
2. Secure safety during changes in production processes, equipment and staff
"Time pressures and the view that some risks are unavoidable may be barriers to work health and safety [in manufacturing]." Work Health and Safety Perceptions: Manufacturing Industry Report, Safe Work Australia
A change in control and automation processes, such as a new packaging line, can pose serious challenges for food and beverage manufacturers. While upgrades are designed to help businesses expand into new markets, or be more operationally efficient, unrealistic timeframes can create the following conditions:
The rush of staff through inductions for new lines, meaning under trained staff, more machines in operation, and new processes that are unfamiliar and unrefined.
Sourcing of temporary staff to increase resources on the new line, meaning more staff who are unfamiliar with equipment.
While not ideal, the reality is that these situations frequently arise. Here are some ways you can minimise your exposure to injury in just such circumstances:
Fast action: Use staff as instant feedback loop whenever introducing a new process, product or equipment into production. They’ll be able to identify safety and logical issues quickly. Get a responsible person or team leader to monitor staff who’re performing new tasks.
Thinking ahead: Ensure signage and equipment documentation is up-to-date at all times. Plan for incident responses and have contingencies in place for how to keep operations running. This might involve providing machinery, production and automation training for selected staff on different roles, and ensuring spare parts are available for high equipment criticality ratings.
3. Ensure safety basics are applied in all high pressure conditions
With increased pressure to perform, basic safety measures like wearing gloves, can be easily forgotten. Safe Work Australia reports that, “The most common self-reported exposures in the industry were exposure to airborne hazards, noise and vibration.” And these are best mitigated through use of protective clothing and equipment.
While each facility will experience different kinds of safety hazards, there are some common basic safety, electrical and automation precautions to watch for. Staff should always:
Fast action: Make it known to staff that safety comes before production targets. Wear appropriate safety clothing. Check integrity of machine guarding, remind staff to check isolation and be careful around charge capacitors.
Thinking ahead: Make sure procedures are up-to-date and safety messages are well signed and understood prior to the event of increased workload or a major piece of equipment upgrade. Ensure they involve basic safety checks around electrical and control systems.
4. Ensure plant safety beyond the shop floor
Safety extends beyond the shop floor. Warehousing and supply chain activities must also be considered during busy times, when there are more deliveries and pickups, loading and unloading of goods, and people walking among machinery, loading zones and warehouses. This boost in activity increases the risk of injury to anyone walking throughout the facility.
To mitigate the risk of injury, you can:
Fast action: Clean workstations and equip them with the right tools to eliminate movement.
Thinking ahead: Implement lean 5S practices and a parts standardisation regime.
Whether you are going through change, demand spikes or regular production periods, managers have a huge amount of control over their organisation's safety culture. Building a positive safety culture will result in employees acting independently to protect themselves and others in all situations.
Regular, incremental actions can embed a positive safety attitude in your organisation’s culture. Such initiatives might include the following.
Management and staff should always be identifying health and safety risks, discussing health and safety concerns, and removing hazards where possible.
Remember, safety is not a ‘set and forget’ function. It needs to be consistently discussed in order for the company to remain compliant and its people to be safe.
When a machine stops, it can quickly escalate to calling in external help – sometimes unnecessarily. The Breakdown Checklist is designed to get you back online faster. It will get your team thinking about what caused the breakdown and assess the need for external advice. Download the free downtime checklist here.
SAGE Automation delivers agile, scalable and secure automation training solutions that don’t just solve current problems, they pre-empt and deter future ones, helping your organisation thrive. With years of experience working in defence, infrastructure, resources, utilities and manufacturing, SAGE has unmatched expertise standing by to upskill you or your team.