Industrial machine safety tips for lowering risk

Even in the safest work environment, heavy machinery increases the risk level. It’s important to prepare your facility and workforce to manage these risks and avoid incidents. These machine safety tips should help you create a comprehensive strategy for equipment hazard management.

Tips for using machines

You won’t be able to avoid incidents if your workers don’t practice safe behaviors. To get everyone on board, you need to change the culture within your facility. And one of the best ways to improve safety culture is to invest in training. Here are some machine safety tips to share with your workers so they can protect themselves better.

• Never attempt to operate a machine you’re not trained to use.
• Inspect machinery before each use to look for damage and other issues.
• Follow the manufacturer’s shutdown procedures step by step.
• If the machine isn’t working properly, stop using it and notify management.
• Inspect your PPE for defects or fit issues before starting work.
• Check that all potential trip and fall hazards are removed from the workspace.
• Communicate with other in the area when you’re going to start up equipment.
• Ensure that no machine guards are missing, loose, or out of place.

Reducing machine safety risks

While workers are responsible for their own personal safety, you have to set them up for success. The way to do this is to identify and remove machinery hazards wherever possible. Here are some tips for lowering machine safety risks and creating a safer work environment.

• Do a risk assessment for each piece of machinery and take corrective action to lower the risk levels as much as you can.
• Create machine-specific safety training so workers know what hazards to avoid.
• Display emergency procedures for all heavy equipment in the work area.
• Establish PPE requirements for each machine.
• Implement a lockout/tagout procedure to prevent accidental machine startups.
• Conduct routine machine safety inspections.
• Red tag broken machinery and store it where workers can’t accidentally use it.
• Create a preventative maintenance schedule that includes every machine in your process.
• Install machine safety guards that are difficult to remove or tamper with.
• Where possible, eliminate unnecessary clutter and storage around hazardous machines.
• Train employees to identify, control, and report machine safety hazards they see.
• Ensure that all work areas are sufficiently lit to make safe machine use easier.
• Conduct machine emergency drills for hands-on hazard control training.
• Track all corrective actions related to machine safety incidents, maintenance, etc.

By following these machine safety tips, you’ll be able to lower the risk level of your operation. Just make sure you document your efforts for both internal and external review. That way, you can learn from past action items and find new, better ways to improve protect your workers.