Posted By Dave Richardson I work in a medical devices manufacturing company and in one of our departments we assemble Cannular needles into hubs, then the hubbed needles are packaged into hard plastic guard containers. As the needle pass along a conveyor in narrow racks, each rack contains 25 needles in the verticle position, they sometimes fall over and the operatoer will raise the covered section and set the rack in the upright position again. My problem is that the operators sometime leave the covers open. There is no way for the operator to fall on the verticle needles due to the height of the side panels of the cover. However the quality department see this as an issue with contamination and want to attach interlocks on the covers. The problem with doing this would be that if the cover, when opened stopped the line, more racks would fall over due to inertia on the conveyor. This would mean more racks would falls over, leading to potentially more needle stick injuries overall. My thoughts are to alarm the covers and place warning signs on the side of the conveyor. Firstly, would this be a responsible enough action and secondly would it be suitable and compliant with legislation. I am aware of the need to guard dangerous parts of equipment but in this case I feel it may be overkill to completly cover the conveyor with unmovable or interlocked gurding. Any advise would be appreciated. Are there any QA guys out there who would disagree. Thanks Dave

Posted By RP From your description, it does sound like a problem with the conveyor belt rather than the guarding (although guards provided should be difficult to remove or interfer with). Have you contacted the equipment manufacturers for a solution to prevent the needle racks falling over in the first place. This may need a re-design but I would think it was possible.