Posted By Philip Plume I work for a medium to large sized foor manufacturer. We have lots of processing equipment and a large number of guards to prevent access to moving parts. We have a range of guards from fixed to semi fixed(bolted) to interlocking and distance guards. Recently we have had a few accidents due to missing or inadequate guarding, so the board has given this issue priority. controls at the moment rely on the following question on the daily start up checks, "are all safety guards in place?" Last week I went and had a close look at the first third of one of our production lines and found 120 guards. By asking this start up question we are asking supervisors to confirm that all 120 guards are in place every day. Most iof the supervisiors would not have a clue where all these were, or the time to check them. The total number of guards on the site would be 2-3 thousand if not more. I have had a think and propose to individually label every guard with a unique number then asses the risk and likely hood of a missing guard. I can then prioritise which guards should be checked weekly, Monthly or Daily. Do you think this is a good approach? do we need to check bolted guards , as they can be unbolted? How do other companies deal with the guarding issue? Your thoughts would be appreciated, I don't what to overkill the situation. Cheers Phil

Posted By Edward H There are various ways this can be tackled, what is justified will have to be based on risk. That can range from something like the old Power Presses Regs where each press had to have an inspection card attached to it and a trained person had to inspect the machine within the first hour of each shift and sign the card. Through to sample inspections at various intervals. I am not sure whether "foor" in your post was a typo for food or floor or door or whatever, but it is very likely that there will be certain machines that will need daily inspections [e.g. those where there is a temptation for operators to stick their hands in] and others where there is no need for close approach that can be looked at less often. Inspections can be made easier/more reliable by making the required standard obvious, tips I have seen include painting all guards bright yellow and the parts of the machine normally covered by the guard frames bright red, with the guards in place you should not see any red, if they are missing you will... Take photos of the properly guarded machine, encapsulate them and attach them to the machine as a visual checklist for operators or supervisors. Interlocked guards will obviously require function checks as well Hope this helps

Posted By Philip Plume foor = food, sorry

Posted By Philip Plume This special tool is a spanner at the moment. Removal of the guards is mainly done by the cleaners. Numbering the guards should give us more control as we will be able to specify cleaning intervals and then establish frequencies for checking guards based on risk assesment. I think that the jist of the posts so far, and is along simular lines to my own ideas.

Posted By Philip Plume That's a good point Flic, and I completely agree with what you say. But the point is that production just come in in the morning and start up without fully checking the guards. We have to tackle the cleaners and production in order to make a difference. I believe that we first need to identify all the guarding and establish which ones are the most critical.