In paperboard packaging manufacturing—and any industry, for that matter—your people are your greatest resource. Plant safety belongs at the top of your list, today and tomorrow. After all, machines and products can be replaced, but your workers can’t. Focusing on safety precautions keeps your team healthy, well, and able to keep the rest of your production floor on task and on time.
Below is food for thought on two crucial focus areas for ensuring safety: behaviors and equipment.
Behaviors – Teach Your Team to Care for Their Bodies
Your first major area of focus should be your workers’ physical behaviors. You should not only promote safe behavior through policy but also encourage it through plant layout.
Promote proper form for repetitive motions to decrease the likelihood of soft-tissue injuries or worse. This is especially important for the most labor-intensive parts of the packaging process, like finishing, that come with the highest risk of injury.
Take team member safety even further by focusing on the positioning of your workers and the location of supplies and materials. Proper placement can decrease the need for bending or muscular strain by increasing the ease of the process.
Additionally, reduce the frequency of injury by looking into automation. After all, your workers can’t get hurt if a machine is doing the strenuous labor.
Equipment – Prevent Unconscious Mistakes
Regardless of machines’ benefits, they carry an inherent risk to workers. It’s your job to take every safety precaution available to ensure the security of your workers whether handling machinery or not.
First, you can prevent accidents with pressure-sensitive mats. When triggered, they immediately turn off the machine, which is ideal for the worker who forgot their spacing and got too close.
Lights and curtain barriers can act as visual stimuli – or even physical deterrents – that make your environment safer for workers. Especially after training, these additions work with your team to keep them away from dangerous sections of the floor.
Visual cues are fantastic for spot checks, as well. Every nip point on your machinery should have a guard on it. Numbering these guards informs you at a glance whether any are missing. If you don’t see number 10, you know that guard 10 isn’t in place and should be addressed before production continues.
Want another resource to help maintain safety? Participate in PPC’s Safety Boxscore Report, which measures your plant’s safety record relative to similarly sized converters and provides a breakdown of specific injuries and problem areas. By participating, your company will also be eligible for special safety milestone achievement awards. Learn more at https://paperbox.org/programs/benchmarking/.