Toward Safer Workplaces: The Case for Smarter Automation

By Matthew Chang

A few weeks ago, I was asked by one of the national food production publications to give my perspective on a recent workplace accident in Vernon, CA. This incident was a heartbreaking story about a 19-year-old worker at a food production plant who entered a burrito-making machine to clean it. Suddenly, the entrance locked, and the equipment was inadvertently turned on.  

A day later, I saw similar news about a recent accident in Plymouth, IN. In this case, a 30-year-old individual was caught in the press at a tire and rubber factory and died. 

These stories are tragic and underscore one of the primary reasons for enhanced automation in manufacturing, as well as the necessity for significantly higher efficiency and more accurate production. 

Effective automation allows human workers to stay completely away from dangerous machinery parts. Their jobs become more important and more rewarding than ever before, while automation is making their work sites increasingly safer. 

In the case of the food manufacturing incident, the application was susceptible to issues related to a confined space entry plan for the machinery, as well as a faulty locking mechanism, and could have benefited from automated cleaning methods, such as CIP (Clean-in-Place) technology. This level of automation could prevent an accident like this from ever happening.  

The most severe manufacturing failures are those situations where a human worker in an automated environment is injured or someone dies. 

In the era of advanced robotic automation, such a tragedy should never happen again. 

How is your own automation faring during our seasons of change? Are you vulnerable to workplace accidents? To prospective system failures or cybersecurity breaches? Is your operation as effective and efficient as you need it to be? Now may be the time for an assessment. When you’re ready to envision and plan a better future, I invite you to contact us.