By Stephanie Neil
When designing packaging machinery for adaptability, it’s important to understand how the controls and components impact the way the machine moves, and even more critical to ensure those movements — and the machine itself — are safe.
The obvious safety mechanisms include adding emergency stop (e-stop) buttons that will shut down equipment when pressed, or light curtains with a sensing screen to guard the machine’s access points and perimeters. Safety relays monitor external devices, signaling the machine to stop or remove power to hazardous components. There are also safety PLCs that are designed for safety-related applications, and other safety instrumented systems (SIS) that monitor parameters and take action to prevent accidents.
But even with all of these protective measures in place, the key to safety in packaging equipment requires risk assessment and applying packaging-specific safety standards during the design stage.
Many of the requirements for safeguarding machinery can be found in the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) B11 safety standards. ANSI B11.0-2020, for example, outlines the criteria for the design, construction, installation, operation and maintenance of risk reduction methods, such as a guard or light curtain.
A more focused approach, the ANSI B155.1 standard, provides safety requirements for processing and packaging machinery, including the steps needed to develop machinery and requirements for risk assessments.
The latest version of the standard, ANSI/PMMI B155.1-2023: Safety Requirements for Packaging and Processing Machinery, released last year, guides packaging OEMs through a risk assessment process to identify hazards. It also addresses new challenges that could introduce more risks, including remote management of machines which could result in a cybersecurity breach, and new models like machinery as a service (MaaS), where equipment is on-premise but not owned by the end user. Each of these scenarios puts added responsibility on the OEM to ensure machine safety.
Understanding that standards can be overwhelming, there are tools available to help guide OEMs through a risk assessment. One example is DesignSafe software, an app developed by consultant Design Safety Engineering, which specializes in risk assessment process and improving the safety of machinery through design. The software provides a systematic method for conducting a task-based risk assessment and techniques for eliminating and controlling hazards. The goal here is not only to prevent accidents, but to also reduce design and development costs, improve productivity, and reduce liability as it relates to safety incidents.
Energy matters
There are also safety issues around hazardous energy, something that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) Lockout/Tagout (LOTO) standard addresses. It outlines practices and procedures necessary to disable machinery to prevent the release of hazardous energy while servicing or maintaining equipment. There is also the ANSI/ASSP Z244.1 standard that establishes guidelines for the control of hazardous energy associated with machinery, equipment, or processes that could harm personnel.
According to ANSI, hazardous energy from electrical, mechanical, hydraulic, pneumatic, chemical, thermal, or other sources in machines could cause electrocution, burns, crushing, cutting, lacerating, or fracturing of body parts. For example, a jammed conveyor system that suddenly releases could crush a worker who is trying to clear the blockage. Or internal wiring of equipment with electrical shorts could shock maintenance or repair technicians.
“Accidents caused from hazardous energy release remain alarmingly high, injuring around 50,000 workers each year,” according to an ANSI blog post.
Last year, Design Safety Engineering conducted a survey of 276 manufacturing professionals from a variety of industries, including packaging, to gauge safety practices for controlling hazardous energy. The consensus is that the age-old practice of “when in doubt, lock it out,” is not enough in the world of complex machines. To that end, 77% of machine builder respondents stated that end users require that safety devices be included as part of an alternative method to OSHA’s LOTO. That could be interlocked access doors or gates, light curtains or area scanner, sequence locks, or control devices.
Many of the respondents also indicated that the reason that LOTO or alternative safety measures don’t work, is because they are not being used during minor servicing tasks. In other words, operator error, which is the biggest issue in safety and which is uncontrollable.
As a result, the call to action for packaging OEMs to create machines that are “safe by design.”
Filed Under: Packaging
