According to the International Labour Organisation more than 7,600 people die globally from work-related accidents every single day. As manufacturing becomes more automated, accidents can happen if there aren’t the right processes in place to safeguard workers. Unfortunately, human nature is such that people will often put their urgency to fix a problem – especially when it’s holding up expensive production processes - ahead of their own safety.
Global safety regulations are incredibly important to ensure the safe operation of machinery. Even in already heavily regulated markets, there are huge opportunities to improve on the standardisation of basic concepts and general principles for safe machinery operations.
Halma company Fortress designs and manufactures customised access solutions that help protect employees working in hazardous environments. Its interlocking products switches the machinery into a safe state before allowing access and making sure only authorised employees can enter that area. Trapped key interlocking is a sequential process used to access machinery safely. There are two keys – one places the machinery in a safe state, letting authorised employees enter the hazardous area – this then releases the access key which the operator takes with them. The machine can then only be restarted by reinserting the access key and the first key. This eliminates the possibility of human error which could lead to the machine being restarted, resulting in serious injury or, in some cases, death.
Fortress has representatives on many global machine safety standards committees. This allows them to keep up with changing market requirements, advise on new regulations as well as receive advance warning of future risks and opportunities which could influence its product roadmap. Fortress can also provide its customers and employees with tailored training to make sure machinery is safely operated.
Safety regulations like these are key long-term growth drivers for many Halma businesses. As regulations continue to increase throughout the world, the need for our companies’ specialist solutions that meet these high standards are becoming even more in demand.
