Machinery Safety Innovations
In March this year I, Andrea Rowe, was honoured to present at the International Machinery Safety Conference in Rome, Italy.
The conference was focused on innovative research and solutions for machinery safety. Best practice ideas and analysis were presented by leading researchers and industry safety professionals.
In this article I share some of the highlights I think might be of interest to us here in Australia.
New Technologies can Prevent Accidents:
Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be used to prevent estimated 50% of accidents. For example, warning workers in unsafe proximity to electrical hazards or not wearing the correct protective equipment.
Use of robots can prevent estimated 25% of accidents. Robots can be used to work in hazardous locations, such as working on overhead electrical wires, or for emergency rescue, preventing the need for humans to enter unsafe environments.
Innovation wearable technology, such as exoskeletons, can reduce the physical burden of workers and manual handling (musculo-skeletal) injuries.
Modern fabrics can help workers to adapt to climatic conditions eg hot or cold work environments.
Concerns with Robots and AI:
Devices that use internet such as remote-controlled cranes without cyber security features could be operated by hackers with rogue remote controls.
It is estimated that 43% of businesses have equipment that could cause serious harm if unauthorised control of equipment is gained by hackers.
Businesses need to ensure that:
Safety functions on machinery and plant are safe from cyber-attacks.
“Intelligent” plant such as automated guided vehicles (AGVs) and collaborative robots (cobots) can be quickly isolated if control is corrupted.
There is a pre-determined rapid communication process for business to enact if workers detect anomalies or suspect control of the equipment has been hacked.
Resistance to change, as always, is a challenge. The introduction of new technologies and changing of the worker’s role, potentially replacing their co-workers with robots, can impact the workers’ mental health.
This is an important reminder to involve workers in the change process, explaining the proposed uses of new technologies and the challenges, benefits and issues with the technology.
Defeating Machinery Safeguards
The defeating of machinery safeguards, such as bypassing of interlocks, is something that we at Safety Action have seen many times, both locally and overseas.
Despite having seen many defeated safeguards, I was shocked to hear the latest statistics from presenter, Jonas Stein of IFA in Germany.
Their survey found a significant percentage of machinery had safeguards defeated, with:
17.5% being defeated temporarily, and
10% of equipment had safeguards permanently defeated.
What is more alarming is that:
“Half of all defeated machinery safeguards were known and tolerated by the supervisor(s)”.
I wonder what senior managers in your business would think about this chilling statistic. We think the best defence against this type of behaviour is clear understanding of safety roles and responsibilities, and stronger safety leadership.
Call 03 8544 4300 or email us to book a place or for more information on our next Safety Leadership Course, running on 11 & 12 June.
Businesses should consider the following:
Are your supervisors displaying good leadership? Make sure that your managers and supervisors are aware of the consequences of defeating machinery safeguards - both the physical consequences to the workers and legal consequences for themselves personally and the business.
Make it clear that your business does not permit or tolerate machinery safeguards to be defeated. Treat breaches seriously.
Anticipate faults and look for potential defeating of safeguards in pre-start checks, regular workplace inspections, and machinery risk assessments.
Support operators with fault finding and provide a process to help them efficiently clear blockages.
Investigate problems and find out if existing machine safeguards are hindering safe and efficient machine operation.
Learn more here
For more information on this article or any questions machinery safeguarding contact Andrea Rowe at Safety Action Pty Ltd.