See How Lockout Tagout Equipment Can Ensure The Safety Of Your Staff

By Author: reiko pena
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The Lockout Tagout procedure is a standard safety exercise that ensures the safety of staff that routinely operates machinery. Lockout tagout systems are put in place on faulty equipment by maintenance personnel. These systems consist of padlocks, circuit breakers, informational or warning tags plus a number of other tools that lock down the machine they’re applied and restrict access to the machine. If a piece of equipment such as a furnace or assembly line mould malfunctions this can be extremely dangerous. Shutting down the machine is the first step in preventing damage to the machine and products as well as ensuring the safety of the operators who use it. The next step is to make sure it can’t be restarted again before the vital maintenance work is complete. This is the purpose of lockout tagout systems.
Lockout kits provide many of the essential tools to implement a lockout, including tags which lend themselves to the term ‘lockout tagout’. Tags are in some ways just as important as locks. They provide a basic explanation and warning that the equipment it is placed ...
... on is faulty or that it should not be started up. They add to the visual disincentive to operate any equipment bearing the tag. Since the main purpose of lockout tagout tools is to ensure safety of personnel the use of tags is very important even though they offer no real physical barrier to accessing any machinery. Tagging is quick to do and highly effective once in place so should be one of the first steps in ensuring equipment remains shutdown.
To create a real barrier to switching machinery back on you need to put circuit breakers in place, which are generally included in lockout kits. These isolate the equipment under maintenance from any power sources. This means that it cannot be turned back on even if this is attempted until the circuit breaker is removed. As well as preventing anyone intentionally restarting machines it will also reduce the risk of accidentally restarting anything. Maintenance of equipment in manufacturing plants often involves sharp, hot or otherwise harmful elements. Through these numerous simple steps lockout tagout systems help to prevent accidents in the work placements.