[National Safety Month] Best Practices For Improving Manufacturing Safety Procedures
Discover how to approach, recognize, and prioritize employee safety in the most high-risk industry
Blue-collar workers are exposed to the most high-risk environments – especially the manufacturing industry. Those in this industry face real potential dangers every day as they earn their livings. In fact, the CDC estimates that 13,455,000 workers in manufacturing industries are at risk for fatal and nonfatal injuries every year. That accounts for approximately 5% of the United States workforce. From those numbers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the private manufacturing sector had 836,700 injuries of the 4.6 million recorded – representing nearly 20% of the private industry total.
Ensuring proper safety practices and procedures is not an option anymore – it’s a necessity! Protecting employee health and safety has to become a number one priority, and in order to do so, here are some best practices for improving manufacturing safety procedures:
Have a safety plan and execute that plan effectively and efficiently
Swift action could be the deciding factor in saving a life and reducing risk – but how can your organization be sure a quick response is guaranteed with every potential incident? Most importantly for the larger corporations, how can you ensure certain criteria are being met in every possible industrial facility or warehouse? The simple answer is a safety plan.
Having a safety plan in place is the difference between a life or death situation. Further enhance safety plans by introducing a digital form solution that can not only track safety data but notify advisors, supervisors, managers, and more when there is a safety concern or an immediate response is required – further elevating safety processes. Introducing safety plans to the digital realm not only allow for critical data to be collected and analyzed in real-time but provides visibility into remote locations, allowing small and large corporations to all benefit from a constant stream of critical information.
Understand and educate staff about the big risk areas
Alongside proper, in-depth machinery training should be education around the major risk factors for operating specific machinery or equipment. Educating personnel on potential outcomes of not abiding by specific safety procedures in place and continuously revisiting the topic allows for safety to remain top of mind.
Along with revisiting safety topics, digital solutions like QR codes can be placed on each machine, which when scanned can display proper safety practices. To further enhance safety, manufacturers can take QR codes to the next level with digital forms by introducing a sign-in form that allows supervisors visibility into what employees are using what machines on specific days. These sign-in forms can be enhanced with drag-and-drop form fields that enforce employee signatures after reading through the terms and conditions of each machine they use – ensuring employees are continuously familiar with proper safety procedures.
Continuously evolve safety procedures through corrective and preventative actions
As much as we try to prevent incidents, unfortunately, they still happen. In order to guide safety procedures to evolve with your business, introduce digital solutions that can track safety data in a centralized location and alert your organization when accidents arise.
For example, by introducing an online form builder to document daily inspections to your organization, manufacturers can set up dynamic forms that ensure thorough reports of critical information. A manufacturing supervisor can set up an inspection form to:
Notify specific personnel immediately if a certain form field was selected
Add further information if a hazard was reported and make that field required
Capture new data types like Images and Sketch fields to add visual context
Attach multiple files within a form to eliminate extra means of communication
… and much more!
By having this system in place, not only can safety officers or supervisors add an extra layer of corrective and preventative actions in the future, but respond quicker to reported incidents.
At the end of the day, your employees are your responsibility – their health and safety should be the number one priority regardless of your industry type. Introducing digital tools within your safety practices not only can streamline your operations from end to end but also enhance your productivity, elevate efficiency, and increase employee morale. Take the step today to improve your manufacturing safety procedures and discover the various benefits of introducing your safety systems into the digital realm.
About GoFormz
GoFormz is an online form builder and operational data management solution that helps transform collected data into actionable insights. We believe that introducing digital solutions should be seamless and result in simple onboarding and elevate organizational efficiency. Whether you need an electronic signature form or critical safety documentation, GoFormz can bring your existing paper forms to the digital space (which no other digital solution can offer) – requiring no coding experience! Completed with Automated Workflows and an open API, collected data can be instantly routed to existing programs and accessible in real-time.
