Today's industry safety standards not only provide guidance to help reduce the risk of injury and damage to machinery, but also improve productivity in the workplace. The ANSI/ASSE 1 Z244.1-2003 (R2008) ¹ and ANSI/PMMI² B155.1-20062 standards are good examples of how a safe work environment can be promoted while a company can increase productivity at the same time. It shows an example.
The ANSI/ASSEZ244.1- 2003 (R2008) Hazardous Energy Lockout/Tagout Control and Alternate Methods standard allows manufacturers to reduce the time required to perform safety procedures while increasing the safety provided. It addresses the need for shortening. Previously, the routine task of clearing a simple jam would have required workers to spend considerable time traveling to different locations on the machine to perform lockouts with multiple energy sources. .
Due to the "time = money" equation, workers take the quickest route. These simple methods may lack some lockout points or lockout all energy sources connected to the machine. Since lockout points are there to prevent power from being applied to the machine, failure to perform even one lockout task could very well increase the risk of injury to personnel or damage to equipment.
¹ ANSI (American National Standards Institute) ASSE (American Society of Safety Professionals) = American National Standards Institute
² PMMI (Packaging Machinery Manufacturers Institute) = Packaging Machinery Institute
The current ANSI/ASSE Z244.1-2003 (R2008) standard addresses this issue by reducing the required lockout location (under certain circumstances) to one, allowing it to be located closer to the operator. We are dealing with it. When properly implemented, such single point lockouts can provide an excellent safety solution and minimize machine downtime due to lockout events. To achieve these duality goals, the system is dedicated to high control reliability devices such as dual channels, low voltage lockable switches, dual high control reliability relays, and ROSS DM2 ® series double valves. Must be a control system.
Reducing the lockout location to a single location is called "Single Point Lockout (SPLO)" . This alternative method can only be used for tasks related to normal production or machine operation and a risk assessment must be performed for the specific task to determine if the task is suitable for SPLO. So why is SPLO so popular? can be reduced. Greater assurance that lockouts are in place improves worker and equipment safety. Additionally, SPLO also reduces the time required to put the machine into safe mode.
One company using ROSS's DM2 ® Series valves was able to reduce lockout time by more than four minutes on a particular machine with an average of eight jams per shift. That means 32 minutes of machine run time per shift, or 1 hour and 36 minutes more per day. Amazingly, this allowed us to add another eight hours of production time in five days.
The safety requirements of the ANSI/PMMI B155.1-2006 "Packaging Machinery and Packaging-Related Processing Machinery" standard address the safety requirements for packaging machinery and packaging-related processing machinery. The standard now requires the use of safety shut-off and exhaust valves to shut off and release pneumatic pressure from various systems when servicing machinery, and they must be of the following specifications:
As mentioned above, risk assessment refers to a series of processes from clarifying the "risks" that can cause troubles that may occur on site to considering measures to prevent troubles. Taking action based on the results of the risk assessment is called “risk management”.
1) Locking is possible only in the OFF position
2) Easy to operate
3) Equipped with an exhaust port that has an exhaust capacity greater than the capacity of the supply port
4) Equipped with an indicator that can visualize pressure
Air pressure is quickly and fully applied when the isolation/exhaust valve is closed, even if there is only a very small vent for the exhaust port, such as the ball valves that are most often used in the most common packaging applications. There can be a false perception that the
This situation can be avoided by making a large exhaust port a mandatory requirement. For example, pumping 1 cubic foot of compressed air at 100 psig (≈ 0.69 Mpa) will take 4 minutes to exhaust through a ball valve (25A) that has only a small outlet, in contrast to that. The 25A shut-off/exhaust valve (25A) exhausts the air pressure in 1.2 seconds. Workers may be unaware that it may take some time to vent the air pressure in the system and may start the task at hand before the air pressure is fully vented. Using a valve with a full size (large diameter) exhaust port will avoid this situation. In addition to increased safety levels, the time and money equation poses a problem.
What is the value of minimizing downtime for a particular task? (99.5 percent in this example) ROSS's LOX ® valves include large-diameter exhaust ports, ANSI/PMMI B155.1-2006 meets all the requirements of , but not the majority of ventilated ball valves. So remember that following the 'standard' improves safety and uptime. "Safety + machine uptime during production = money" is an equation that meets the criteria of ANSI/ASSE Z244.1-2003 (R2008) and ANSI/PMMI B155.1-2006 standards.