In today’s bottom-line focused industrial environment, there’s a tendency for top management to cut costs wherever possible. Unfortunately, when it comes to machine safety, this mentality can disrupt production and require costly repairs or replacement of capital equipment. And these are just the hard costs. The “soft” costs of not utilizing both best practices when assessing machinery-related risk and the best available machine safeguarding technologies can be much greater and have longer-term impact on a company’s profitability. Potential soft costs of inadequate machine safeguarding include disgruntled customers, drawn-out lawsuits, resource-consuming OSHA investigations, and reduced investor confidence.
Safety is relative; no machine can be made completely safe. Rather than attempting to eliminate machine-related risk, knowledgeable plant managers strive to reduce residual risk to a level that’s acceptable for their respective companies while complying with all relevant standards and regulations.
Functional safety standards have been largely harmonized in recent years, reducing complexity and confusion for machine builders and end users alike. But selecting the right machine safeguarding technology remains challenging for anyone who does not specialize in this field. Download the asset below for some top tips for selecting the right machine safeguarding technology for their factories or plants.
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