design safety engineering, inc. - Blog

Introduction to Lean, Green and Safety Opportunities

This is an exciting time in risk assessment. Risk assessment can be applied for benefit, not just adding more time, effort and safety devices. There are sunshine and flowers to the effort and not only gloom and doom. Whether machinery uptime, process throughput, new ideas for features, patentable innovations, or simply documenting that a company makes good products with acceptable risk, ample opportunities abound to apply the process and derive improvements. The opportunities abound because risk assessment works.

Read Full Article

Foreseeable Misuse

Does misuse need to be included in a risk assessment? Yes and No. What does not need to be included is intentional abuse or deliberate misuse of the machine, equipment or product. If a reasonably foreseeable misuse is anticipated, it should be included in the risk assessment, though this does not mean any risk reduction measures are required or will be taken. In some instances a team may agree that although they can foresee misuse, no additional risk reduction measures are required. In other occasions the team may conclude that additional risk reduction measures are necessary to prevent misuse.

Read Full Article

The Good Faith Application of Risk Reduction

One framework for acceptable risk can uses the principle described as "The good faith application of the hierarchy of controls" (Taubitz, personal communication, 2003). This framework recognizes that resources are not unlimited, and that decisions about risk reduction measures and acceptable risk must be made within this constraint.

Read Full Article

Developing Warning and Safety Labels Using Risk Assessment

Product safety labels are used in a wide variety of applications including consumer products, industrial machinery, commercial equipment, etc. The purpose of a product safety label is to alert persons to a hazard and/or how to avoid the hazard. An example of what a label could read is "Danger: Hazardous voltage. Follow lockout procedure before servicing."

Read Full Article

Harmonizing the Risk Assessment Process

The word "harmonizing" is used to describe the process of bringing two or more documents into accord or agreement. A typical application can be found where two or more countries have individual standards that apply to one product, machine or component. Representatives from the countries form a committee to work out the differences and create one standard that then applies in both countries. Harmonization does not require that the resulting standards be identical. Although the individual country standards may still exist, the differences remain minor. The harmonization process allows for local control for individual countries, yet provides typically common standards for industry.

Read Full Article

Prevention Through Design

Prevention through Design (PtD) is a relatively new term to describe concepts long considered informally by engineers and equipment designers. ANSI B11.0 (2010) Safety of Machinery notes the following:

Prevention through Design or PtD is recent term in the industry; the objectives of risk assessment, risk reduction and elimination of hazards as early as possible are integral and not new to this standard. Although, the phrase “Prevention through Design” was not used within the standard, other equivalent terms such as “elimination by design,” “design out,” and “substitution” are used in addition to thoroughly addressing risk assessment and applying it to the lifecycle and operations of the machine.

Read Full Article

Risk Assessment in the Near Future

Fortune telling is rarely a promising venture. However, some projections can be reasonably postulated based on the current trends. The following projections are only ideas on what lies ahead in the quickly evolving risk assessment effort. Guarantees are neither given nor implied.

Risk Assessment Will Become a Condition of Sale

Customers will increasingly require risk assessment as a condition of sale. Purchasers of machinery, equipment, products and/or components will begin to require that a risk assessment of the system be performed before they will accept the system.

Read Full Article

Determining Acceptable Risk

Achieving consensus on what constitutes acceptable risk is difficult, largely because the fundamental concept of acceptable risk is subjective and everyone has an opinion. Acceptable risk is a hard discussion to weather in many instances. Yet every day engineers and safety practitioners, operators and maintenance workers, and senior management make decisions about acceptable risk - often with no specific rule or guidance or method.

Read Full Article

Cost Considerations and Risk Assessment

Cost is always a factor in engineering design and also in risk reduction. It is important to evaluate financial constraints early and often in the design process. Resources are always limited. Not every desired or technically possible risk reduction approach can be implemented. Companies only have so many dollars to spend on risk reduction and they need to use those funds wisely to obtain the greatest improvements.

Read Full Article

Warning Labels

Warning labels are a well recognized means of conveying information to product and machinery users to help them avoid harm. Many packaging machinery suppliers incorporate current safety labels with their machinery.

Two industry standards provide the requirements for safety/warning labels: ANSI Z535.4 and ISO 3864-2. The requirements of these standards represent the current state of the art for safety labels. Labels not meeting these requirements may be considered as substandard and incur unnecessary products liability in the event someone is harmed. Unfortunately, many suppliers still continue to use non-standard labeling.

Read Full Article

History and Evolution of Risk Assessment

The formal risk and reliability assessment was conceived to monitor engineering in extreme (and therefore exciting) applications:

"The System Safety discipline emerged on the engineering and management scene in 1962 with the dawning of the space transportation era... System Safety principles emphasize the rigorous development of effective safety risk mitigation strategies based on comprehensive and thorough risk assessment." (McIntyre, 2000)

Read Full Article

"What do you do?"

As with any business, I often get asked the question "what do you do?" The answer has evolved; also an occurrence with many businesses. One aspect of what dse does is that we teach companies to "fish" with risk assessment. We provide the tools (software), the training, and the resources (books, guidance, etc.) to get folks up to speed and engaged in the risk assessment process. If companies want to do risk assessment on their own, and they should for many reasons discussed in this blog, then we have the tools and techniques to get them up and running quickly and effectively.

Read Full Article

Real World Example - Prototype System in the Automotive Industry

A manufacturer in the automotive industry was developing a prototype system for a production line that included robots and operator work stations. Questions arose concerning how to determine the most appropriate risk reduction methods between area scanners, light curtains or fixed guarding. costs of each of these solutions vary, as does the feasibility of their effective use. To determine which solution provided the best risk reduction at a reasonable cost, the company used the risk assessment process.

Read Full Article

The NEW 2011 ANSI/PMMI B155.1 Standard

What's New?

There are many small changes in the new B155.1 standard, but the basic structure of the standard remains unchanged. The following summarizes the changes to the standard.

The Foreword of the standard has been updated to explain how to B155.1 standard compares to the type A/B/C structure used in international standards. B155.1 is primarily an A level standard. The effective date for this revision has also been updated to be six months from the date of publication meaning the requirements will be fully applicable by September 2011. Recall that the effective date for the 2006 publication was 30 months due to the major changes in the standard from a prior version.

Read Full Article

The Status of R15.06 - Robot Standard

I just returned from the robot safety standard meeting and thought an update would be appropriate.

ISO 10218-1 applies to robot. This standard has been approved.

ISO 10218-2 applies to the integration of the robot. This standard is in final review and should be approved by May 2011 after some final changes are discussed in committee.

Read Full Article

Real World Example - Consumer Electronics Manufacturer

A large consumer electronics manufacturer is successfully applying the risk assessment process to a new product development effort. Safety professionals lead the implementation effort and assist in identifying hazards. Design engineers participate in the process of identifying hazards and lead in reducing risks. Managers require risks to be reduced to an acceptable level before the design can advance to production.

Read Full Article

Real World Example - Global Manufacturer

A global manufacturer operates a clean room used in the manufacturer of goods. The system includes proprietary processes for which specialty equipment is required. Because the manufacturer operates in several countries, the equipment must be able to ship anywhere in the world. Therefore, the equipment in the room requires CE marking, which in turn requires a risk assessment.

Read Full Article

Real World Example - An OSHA Inspection

Following a near miss incident in a wood products manufacturing operation, an OSHA inspection resulted in requirements for several process changes. The changes were strictly based on perceived non-compliance with OSHA standards. The requested changes created substantial difficulties for the manufacturer due to the tightly integrated nature of the operation. To implement the OSHA changes would have created substantial problems for the manufacturer in terms of reorienting work flow, modifying equipment, and lost operations to make the changes.

Read Full Article

Why the increased interest in Risk Assessment?

Although risk assessment methods have existed in various forms for many years, there is increased interest in the last few years. Several reasons for this increased include:

Time - the design cycle is under ever increasing pressure to be compressed reducing tolerance for post-sale safety fixes

Read Full Article

The Risk Asessment Process in a Nutshell

There are many different ways to conduct a risk assessment. The methods differ in details, but have certain common elements. This flowchart from ANSI/PMM I B155.1 shows the seven basic steps of the risk assessment process.

1. Prepare for/set limits of the assessment. The first step involves preparing for the assessment. This includes setting limits of what is and is not to be included in the assessment.

Read Full Article

A little bit about ANSI/PMMI B155.1

ANSI/PMMI B155.1 contains the safety requirements for packaging machinery and packaging-related converting machinery. This standard was first published in 1973 with the subsequent editions in 1979, 1986, 1994, in 2000. In 2004 the writing committee began a major revision to the standard to address more fully the requirements of the risk assessment process. The revision integrated the requirements of ISO 12100 parts 1 and 2, and ISO 14121 as well as U.S. standards into a single standard. The intent of the committee was to write a standard that packaging machinery builders could use to "build to one standard, ship anywhere."

Read Full Article

The story behind the "new" ISO 12100 Safety of Machinery

ISO 12100 was recently published in 2010. This "new" international standard is not as new as one might think. This is the story behind this new standard.

In the early 1990s, the European norm (standard ) EN292 Safety of machinery was in trouble. This standard was at risk of never been completed because there were concerns that not enough countries would vote to support publication. As a result the content of the standard was separated into three different standards: EN 292-1 terms and hazard identification, EN 292-2 risk reduction, and EN 1050 risk assessment. As it turned out the political resistance never materialized but by then the three standards had been started and were nearing completion. The standards were published in 1992 and 1995.

Read Full Article

Out with the old ANSI B11 TR3... in with ANSI B11.0!

I am the chair of B11.0 and I'd like to share a bit of its storyB11 refers to the machine tool community. ANSI B11.1 was the original B11 standard and was first published in 1913. Currently there are over 30 standards and technical reports published by the B11 community. The most recent addition to the B.11 standards collection is ANSI B11.0 and pertains to the safety of machinery.

The genesis of the current document can be traced back to late 1995 and the first meeting of what became ANSI B11 Technical Report #3 or more commonly known as B11 TR3. This meeting kicked off the development of a technical report on risk assessment. This effort was a direct result of the pending publication of EN 1050 on risk assessment in the EU. The purpose of TR3 was to form a single committee to write a US based risk assessment guide that could be used and referenced by the more than twenty B11 standards committees. This precluded each individual standard committee writing its own requirements.

Read Full Article

A little taste of Risk Assessment

Risk assessment has been around for decades. Various methodologies for identifying hazards, assessing risks, and reducing them have been developed over the years. One study found over 100 different safety analysis methods, many of which were barely distinguishable. The common theme behind most of the methods was to identify hazards, assess risks, and reduce risks to an acceptable level. For nearly all applications perhaps for methods are sufficient. And in most cases one safety analysis is usually adequate.

Read Full Article