Ensuring Worker Safety on Factory Floors

Workplace is a serious issue and a key concern for all manufacturers. In addition to losing some of your best workers through injury, workplace injuries also cost time, money and reputational damage in some cases.

The injuries happen because manufacturers require their workers to engage in high-risk activities, with a lot of the items in their work environments putting them at risk and affecting their health and well-being negatively.

Most of the accidents and injuries that happen on factory floors can be prevented by putting a few safeguards and preventive measures in place.

Start With a Thorough Safety Assessment

Workplace safety is achievable, but only when managers and business owners understand the risks that exist on their factory floors. To understand these risks, managers and business owners must conduct thorough risk assessments periodically.

Hiring a plant assessor to come up with a risk assessment plan that helps you identify hazards and danger is a good start. The plan will also outline the level of danger each hazard presents, review the safety of all equipment and the factory floor in general, and then provide recommendations for what needs to be done.

Ensure Proper Housekeeping

Even in cases where you know the hazards that exist on the factory floor, these hazards do not go away if the workers do not work with their managers to remove these hazards through housekeeping. Housekeeping helps remove all messes to ensure that the factory floor is clean and organized.

Clutter, mess and debris on a factory floor can be dangerous as it can cause slips and falls, cause equipment such as forklifts to topple and lead to injuries when using other equipment. Additionally, flammable materials can be a serious fire hazard on factory floors that usually have sparks flying around.

Removing all this debris, clutter and dirt and ensuring that all equipment is stored in its rightful place after every use can both go a long way in improving factory floor safety.

Deal With Environmental Pollutants

Environmental pollutants can cause a myriad of health issues including asthma, respiratory issues and even cancer. It is therefore important that every company puts measures in place to protect its workers from environmental pollutants, the most common ones being dust and fumes from the manufacturing process.

Although sufficient ventilation can help in smaller plants, that is not true for larger ones and so companies need a more robust solution. Fume and dust extraction equipment that is specifically tailored to a company’s needs is the best option for ensuring exposure to fumes and dust is kept at a minimum.

To ensure proper fume and dust extraction, it would be best to have a team of experts and engineers, such as that from Extractly, design and install a fume or dust extraction system.

Extract design and install dust and fume extraction systems that help businesses keep their workers safe while staying compliant with all local laws and regulations. Extract serves companies all over the UK and you can get in touch to get a custom dust or fume extraction solution for your company and its specific processes.

Mandate Wearing of Proper Safety Equipment

All employees should wear safety equipment to prevent injuries. Protective equipment such as gloves, proper shoes, high visibility jackets and others all help protect workers.

This equipment helps protect workers as they move under areas where work is being done, from falling off high platforms and from getting electrocuted when doing electrical wiring work. Remember to also mandate that all workers who work with flames or who do welding wear protective goggles and hoods to protect themselves from bright flames, various types of radiation and dangerous fumes.

Ensure All Guarding Mechanisms are Installed and Working

Sheet and platforming machines, which are very common on factory floors, usually come with guards and other safety features. These guards and safety features help protect the fingers and hands of the workers who use this equipment. If these guards and safety features are not installed properly or do not work as expected, workers risk losing their fingers or whole arms.

Similarly, proper guardrails and fall arrest equipment should be installed and provided for all workers who work more than a few feet off the ground. The area under these environments should also be cordoned off to prevent injuries caused by falling objects.

Ensure all Employees Undergo Proper and Regular Safety Training

Lastly, all employees should be properly trained on factory floor safety. This includes what to do to prevent injuries and what to do in the unfortunate situation where injuries happen.

Regular training sessions are also important to ensure workers always remember what to do in any situation.

Conclusion

Factory floors are dangerous places to work. However, they do not have to be so dangerous if employees and managers take measures to ensure the safety of their workers and employees. They can use the tips discussed above to help incidences of minor or major injuries on factory floors.