Saturday, March 23, 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.

The Occupational Health and Safety Administration stipulate the positive right of workers to being in a safe work environment. They have therefore laid down principles keeping workers safe from any harm or injury resulting from dangerous tools. First off, you need to properly maintain all your machinery at the workplace. In addition, make sure your workers are trained to use the machinery in place.

Ramifications of not following laid out employee protection strategies can be dire. Getting charged by the Occupational Health and Safety Administration for failure to protect your employees can cost millions of dollars. Even if it were to cost less, there are many business expenditure lines you do not want to affect. The rule of thumb is making sure your employee protection plan is beyond reproach.

One of the requirements to meet is preventing contact with the dangerous moving parts. According to the Occupational Health and Safety Administration, employers ought to protect the hands, arms as well as other body parts of workers from coming into contact with dangerous moving parts of machinery. You should be using a great safeguarding system to eliminate the possibility of operators placing body parts near moving parts.

When safeguards do not function as intended, it means they are not worth being there in the first place. Therefore, begin by looking for highly durable guards that do not easily wear or tear. Furthermore, they should not be so easy for workers to render ineffective. Firmly securing the devices to your machinery is very important. If not, be certain of penalties in case the worst occurs.

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.

There should be no interference when using safeguards at the workplace. When you have something preventing workers from effective execution of duty, it might get disregarded in a short while. Ensure safeguards allow for safe lubrication without having to be removed. With proper safeguarding strategies, it is very easy to enhance efficiency.




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