Safety
The thing that scares me the most about owning a manufacturing company is that someone I employ will get hurt in a serious way. I'm not talking about a cut, I'm talking about a broken bone or a missing extremity as a direct result of working in the shop. Yesterday I did something to reduce the chances of an incident.
On one of my several-times-per-day shop walks I watched one of the shop guys operate a press. This press punches the window out of the side of body of the original candle lantern. You can imagine that to remove a rectangle of aluminum from a larger part in a single movement, the machine must be pretty powerful. A human body part in the machine when it's operating would certainly be crushed or worse.
Now I'm not the first person to worry about safety. Others before me have developed some simple and effective methods of preventing injuries. One of these methods (which I suspect is law, not just a good idea) is that to get the machine to go the operator must press two buttons simultaneously. If the buttons are 18" apart, there's really no way to both run the machine and still have a hand inside the mechanism. Clever and almost foolproof.
I say almost because at some time in the past the two-buttom mechanism on this particular press had been changed. The operator could make the machine go by pressing a single button rather than two. To make matters worse, the button that made the machine go was labeled "Emergency Stop" and was front and center. The front-and-center aspect made it easy to use for someone who would be running the machine all day. Too easy. Too easy. Too easy! Although the operator I watched was using both hands to press the single button (probably a good idea), something else happened during the changeover. His left hand would loiter near the button while his right hand reached into the press to remove the punched part and add a new one. To me this was a very scary thing to watch. One wrong move and the machine would punch a hole in the man instead of the machine.
I wasn't inclined to make a big fuss, so I found the production manager and asked him to fix the problem when he got a chance. Then I left. However, a few minutes later I realized that this deserved a fuss. I went back and told him I wanted it fixed immediately. We stopped the operation of the machine and he made the change. He also fixed another press that had been similarly modified.
I don't like making peoples' jobs harder (and pressing two buttons all day is clearly harder than pressing one) but this was the right decision and I'm glad I found the problem and got it fixed. I hope I also "sent a message" that safety is important.
On one of my several-times-per-day shop walks I watched one of the shop guys operate a press. This press punches the window out of the side of body of the original candle lantern. You can imagine that to remove a rectangle of aluminum from a larger part in a single movement, the machine must be pretty powerful. A human body part in the machine when it's operating would certainly be crushed or worse.
Now I'm not the first person to worry about safety. Others before me have developed some simple and effective methods of preventing injuries. One of these methods (which I suspect is law, not just a good idea) is that to get the machine to go the operator must press two buttons simultaneously. If the buttons are 18" apart, there's really no way to both run the machine and still have a hand inside the mechanism. Clever and almost foolproof.
I say almost because at some time in the past the two-buttom mechanism on this particular press had been changed. The operator could make the machine go by pressing a single button rather than two. To make matters worse, the button that made the machine go was labeled "Emergency Stop" and was front and center. The front-and-center aspect made it easy to use for someone who would be running the machine all day. Too easy. Too easy. Too easy! Although the operator I watched was using both hands to press the single button (probably a good idea), something else happened during the changeover. His left hand would loiter near the button while his right hand reached into the press to remove the punched part and add a new one. To me this was a very scary thing to watch. One wrong move and the machine would punch a hole in the man instead of the machine.
I wasn't inclined to make a big fuss, so I found the production manager and asked him to fix the problem when he got a chance. Then I left. However, a few minutes later I realized that this deserved a fuss. I went back and told him I wanted it fixed immediately. We stopped the operation of the machine and he made the change. He also fixed another press that had been similarly modified.
I don't like making peoples' jobs harder (and pressing two buttons all day is clearly harder than pressing one) but this was the right decision and I'm glad I found the problem and got it fixed. I hope I also "sent a message" that safety is important.
posted by Keith @ 3:47 AM
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