Industrial Safety

Industrial safety

The purpose of industrial safety is to ensure all the safety hazards are identified, control measures are implemented and occupational accidents are eliminated. Ensuring industrial safety is every one’s responsibility. The parties involved in industrial safety are:

·         Top management

·         Plant management

·         Employees of all levels and categories

·         Government agencies like Director of Industrial Safety and Health (Previously Inspector of Factories), Electrical Inspector, etc)

The top management.

It must formulate a safety policy which will be a guiding factor to all the concerned people. While formulating the safety policy, the top management must also consider the legal requirements to be fulfilled, apart from industry specific matters.

The plant management.

It must actively involve itself in implementing the safety policy guidelines. It should:

·         Conduct job safety analysis and identify hazards

·         Work out required controls including engineering, administrative, and selection of personal protective equipment (PPE) to tackle those hazards

·         Ensure that there are no unsafe conditions in the plant

·         Formulate appropriate training programmes

·         Formulate safety audits and schedule them

·         Form safety committee to address safety issues and encourage the committee to meet as per schedule. Get recommendations from the committee and implement the right ones

·         Make department heads responsible for safety

·         Study and analyse accidents and near misses (incidents), work out strategies to prevent their recurrence

·         Ensure that all the legal requirements are complied with

Employees.

All employees must understand that “Accidents do not happen, they are caused”. They should:

·         Carry out all the works exactly as per the specified procedures and not look for short cuts

·         Understand the aftermaths of accidents clearly

·         Take all prescribed precautions to avoid accidents

·         Attend the training programmes organized by the management and participate attentively

·         Advise anyone who is found violating guidelines

·         Actively involve in safety committee functions

·         Inform the management if any hazard comes to their knowledge and follow up till the hazard is tackled

·         Not indulge in unwanted / unsafe activities

 Government agencies.

The primary responsibility of Government agencies is to enforce the applicable Laws. They inspect the establishments at prescribed intervals and check the compliance.

Accidents.

For any accident to occur three things are to happen. They are:

1.       Unsafe condition,

2.       Unsafe act, and

3.       Human error.

Only when these three factors combine, an accident will occur. Let us consider a scenario. In a shop floor, there is oil spillage on the floor. It is an unsafe condition. A person walks over the oil spillage carefully. It is an unsafe act. Since that person was very careful, accident will not happen. If the person steps on the oil spillage without any consideration, that is human error. Now, accident will happen.

                              

Alert employees can avert accidents even if unsafe conditions exist, by avoiding unsafe act and human error.

Hazards.

In any plant hazards do exist. It is essential to study them, understand them, and work out control measures and implement them effectively to ensure industrial safety. There are industry specific hazards. But there are certain common hazards present in all industries. Most important of them are:

·         Electricity

·         Fire

·         Working at heights

·         Noise

·         Mechanical activities like lift, lower, carry, etc

·         Chemicals

·         Hazardous substances

·         Vehicle movements

In some other post we will learn how to tackle these common hazards.