Fox’s Biscuits, Batley
Safe Machinery Intervention
Profiting together through performance
The initiative
• Objective:
- Improve the safety standard for employees working on machinery.
There are many times when operators have to go into machines and
rely on an interlock guard. Machines take no prisoners and when it
goes wrong it can cause serious injuries.
• Why did we need to do this?
- As we further improved Health and Safety on site, our ways of
working needed to change.
- Whilst historically we do not have many machinery accidents, when
they do occur they can be very serious.
- Interlocks can and have failed throughout the industry!
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The origin of the initiative
• Our starting point was to carry out a machinery
assessment.
- The results of these assessments then helped us as to determine the level of
interlock standards and isolation and lock off standards we needed to adopt.
• What did we do?
- We carried out a process of risk assessing all the main activities on
machinery and this gave us the guidance on the standards we needed
to adopt to make sure that people didn’t get hurt by that machinery.
Profiting together through performance
The origin of the initiative
• The end goal was to have absolute clarity for everyone,
on every machine, of when to trust an interlock and when
Isolation and Lock off, (i.e.. Padlock) would be needed.
• Each machine would have a laminated poster showing
which tasks are safe to carry out trusting the interlock
and which tasks require Isolation and Lock off.
• We used an assessment proforma to do this.
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The solution – development &
implementation
Example of the Assessment Proforma
Machine/Line
Ice Cream Machine
Line 3
Task
Clearing Jams
Routine (new film)
Changeovers
Cleaning
Deep Clean
Web Bonding
Programming
Commissioning
Other:
Maintenance
Time
Taken
Score
1
3
3
5
7
N/A
N/A
N/A
7
Severity
Score
Likelihood
Score
Frequency
Score
1
1
3
1
1
N/A
N/A
N/A
5
5
5
1
1
N/A
N/A
N/A
5
4
2
1
1
N/A
N/A
N/A
1
1
1
Total
12
13
13
8
10
0
0
0
0
10
0
0
This process looked at how often it took to do these jobs, the potential severity
of the injury, the likelihood of an injury occurring and the frequency. Each of
the tasks were added up to give a final, quantified total.
Profiting together through performance
The solution – development &
implementation
Score Card
Consider the following for each task applicable, or mark N/A:
Less than 5 minutes 1
Scratch
1
Very Unlikely due to distance of hazard 1
Longer
1
5-15 minutes
3
Burn/Cut/Bruise
3
Unlikely awkward to get to hazard
3
1 per week
1
15 - 1 hour
5
Severe Laceration 6
Likely hazard easily accessible
5
3 times per week 1
Above 1 hour
7
Break
30
Very Likely hazard hard to avoid
N/A
0
Loss of Limb
Death
10
1 per day
2
50
Every 4 hours
3
70
Every 1 hour
4
Every 10 minutes 5
Time Taken
Severity
Likelihood
Frequency
Profiting together through performance
The solution – development &
implementation
• A practical training session was then delivered out on the shop floor.
• Then back to the Classroom for questions and feedback on the assessment
form.
• Next Steps:
- Each department developed a timescale plan to
assess their machines.
- When this was completed a site matrix was drawn up.
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Impact
•This project has identified areas where we have higher risks
that required immediate, short term action as well as other
longer term machinery upgrade requirements.
•Operators, managers and engineers have had their awareness
on the risks associated with interlocked equipment improved –
not all interlocks are the same!
•The project has generated lots of medium and long term
improvement actions but crucially it has allowed us to manage
higher risks through isolation and lock off and eliminate the
‘grey’ areas.
Profiting together through performance
Any Questions?
Profiting together through performance