Here’s an astonishing statistic: In the United States, the manufacturing industry accounts for roughly 15% of all fatal occupational injuries, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Burns, cuts, electrocution, slips, exposure to toxic chemicals and overexertion — the list of possible injuries in unsafe manufacturing spaces is nearly endless. Even when they aren’t fatal, injuries in manufacturing can be disastrous, causing long-term disability and lifelong suffering.

Worker injuries, fatal or not, are the last thing you want to worry about at your business. In addition to keeping a worker off the line, an injury will cost your company money, either in insurance claims or lawsuits. Ensuring safety on the manufacturing floor costs pennies in comparison to the expense of even a single preventable worker death.

The manufacturing industry is rife with risks to worker health, but it is your responsibility to mitigate those risks and provide your staff with a safe place to work. Here are some meaningful ways you can improve the safety of your manufacturing plant and avoid injuries in the future.

Equipment Guarding

You should try to eliminate as many hazards as possible, but it is foolish to assume that you can eradicate all risks to health and safety in your manufacturing spaces. When it is impossible to fully remove a hazard, you must take measures to protect operators. In most cases, that means placing barriers around equipment that may cause harm or injury.

Typically, equipment guards are not easily removable; thus, employees must recall safety training and choose to put themselves in harm’s way by detaching the barriers. In manufacturing, moving equipment, such as conveyors, turning rolls, chains, gears, belts and presses, is most likely to require guarding. The types of guards you might install include railings and guardrails, screens and windows, bollards, barricades, cones and partitions.

Employee Training

Knowledge is essential to recognizing and avoiding hazards in any workplace, and it is dangerous to assume that all your employees inherently have the knowledge they need to maintain their health and safety. Employees must be trained rigorously to gain appropriate awareness of and response to hazards in their manufacturing workplace, both when they are first hired and continuously throughout their employment. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration recommends four tiers of training for all employees:

• Program awareness training provides an overview of basic safety and health policies as well as workers’ responsibilities for supporting the program.
• Supervisor training reinforces managers’ understanding of their role in creating and maintaining a safe workplace environment.
• Worker training helps workers better understand the risks of their specific roles and provides instruction for avoiding those risks.
• Hazard identification training teaches staff how to identify and control new hazards to eliminate danger before an incident occurs.

In addition to training, all employees should have reliable access to personal protective equipment (PPE), including protective clothing, breathing masks, earplugs, safety helmets, harnesses and more. Safety training should include instruction on how workers should use PPE correctly in all circumstances where it is needed.

Pest Control

You can train your workforce, but you can’t train the pests that infiltrate your manufacturing space. Insects and rodents can wreak havoc on your equipment, creating unknown hazards that radically increase the risk of incidents. Therefore, you must ensure that your manufacturing floor remains a pest-free zone.

The same strategies used to keep bugs and spiders out of the garage can also be applied to your manufacturing space. In addition to the application of pesticides around your property, you should seal all gaps in your building’s external envelope to thwart pest entry. All windows and doors should be properly sealed, and interior spaces should be appropriately ventilated. If a pest infestation is identified, act quickly to remove all pests from the premises and check your equipment for signs of tampering that could increase worker safety risk.

Machine Maintenance

Even without the interference of pests, your manufacturing machinery may become unsafe over time due to broken parts, improperly calibrated components, or other issues related to wear and tear. Even if machine maintenance were not a health and safety concern, you should have a maintenance schedule to optimize equipment performance and prevent unexpected downtime due to equipment failure. Some ways to organize your maintenance schedule include:

• By date: Schedule maintenance every set number of days, weeks, or months.
• By meter readings: Use certain meters to indicate when maintenance checks are required, like an odometer determining the need for an oil change.
• By alarms: Respond to alarm conditions, such as excessive vibration or unusual sounds, to prompt maintenance.
• By order: Schedule certain types of maintenance appropriately, such as calibration following machine repair.

An often-overlooked addition to your machine maintenance schedule might be your plant’s safety equipment, such as safety showers and alarm systems. These should be in optimal condition to ensure workers have access to them when an incident occurs.

Unfortunately, maintenance itself can pose a safety concern. Often, machine maintenance requires the removal of safety guarding, the dismantling of equipment and the exposure of dangerous components. Because workers conducting machine maintenance might be at the highest risk of injury, only the most qualified employees should engage in these tasks. It may also be wise to require maintenance workers to participate in additional training or use advanced safety tech, such as smart PPE.

Conclusion

Without thoughtful planning toward health and safety, your manufacturing spaces will pose a significant threat to your workers. Fortunately, you can take meaningful steps toward reducing hazards and keeping your manufacturing floor an incident-free space for years to come. With effective guarding, employee training, pest control and regular maintenance, you can prevent your workers from becoming just another injury statistic.