Friday, April 5, 2019

How To Implement OSHA Machine Guarding Principles

By Gregory Thomas


Regardless of your industry and kind of tools used at the workplace, it is important to ensure the health and safety of employees comes first. This is the one common factor in all places of work. When the industry has heavy machinery with manifold movable components, ensuring employees safety involves safeguarding from potentially dangerous tools. This explains why implementing OSHA Machine Guarding principles is important.

Without implementing regulations from the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, it would be an infringement on the rights of workers being in a safe environment. The Federal Government Department has in place specific regulations to help protect the safety of employees. If you have heavy machinery, the first thing is making certain it is regularly maintained besides training all employees on the safe use of those machines.

There are hefty consequences resulting from not taking the safety of workers into consideration. When being penalized millions of dollars, it might lead to instability and even closing of business operations. You do not want to risk your investments by flouting regulations that could have cost much less to implement. Therefore, always have a solid protection plan for the workers to guard your investment.

Consequently, one of the first things to include in the worker's protection strategy is ensuring none of their body parts gets in contact with dangerous moving parts of machines. This is one of the most reported forms of workplace injuries. In addition, your safeguards should ensure those workers do not close in on the hazardous machines unless it is under repair or maintenance.

If you have placed safeguards for preventing contact, the next important thing is ensuring employees do not easily tamper with it. When a safeguard is so easy to tamper with, it becomes ineffective in the function it should serve. Essentially, it is the same as having none in the first place. Yet again, make sure guard devices are made from highly durable material. It should withstand tough conditions of daily use.

Moving machinery parts are not the only hazards facing employees. Machines can also get dangerous through falling objects that readily become projectiles. Therefore, you might be looking at another form of danger to prevent. Projectiles can easily injure someone at the workplace and result in court cases regarding compensation. You essentially want a comprehensive guard strategy to prevent workers from all forms of possible injuries.

Make sure that safeguards do not result in new hazards. When the safety mechanism creates another hazard, it defeats its purpose. You may not claim to have had one in the first place. For instance, a jagged edge or unfinished surface can often result in lacerations. For that reason, make sure all edges are bolted or rolled. It goes a long way to ensure sharp edges are completely eliminated.

While protecting the safety of employees is important, it is also wise to ensure guards do not cause interference. For instance, it should not impede workers from quickly performing their jobs. It is very easy for such guards to be overridden. The safeguard should leave enough lubrication room without compelling you to detach from the machine.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment