Chung-Chee Tai
VP Engineering
BluePrint Automation (BPA)
How important should employee safety be for a company and how do employee incidents affect production?
Safety is always number one, above production. Safety incidents hurt the company and morale, and ultimately production.
During packaging, what are the common dangerous areas/machinery for employees?
The mentality that “I will not get hurt” causes the most injuries. Most machinery manufacturers will design their machine to meet OSHA standard, however, common sense is required when operating machinery.
What are the common “shortcuts” employees might take, resulting in work incidents?
Bypassing a safety door switch. Getting inside a machine and getting trapped. Walking or stepping over machines for quicker access to certain areas. Shortcuts are not worth the risk.
What packaging equipment features are essential for employee safety?
BluePrint Automation meets category III (PLd) safety requirement. We eliminate all energy sources when a person enters the machine. The safety features are also provided with redundancy.
How have employee safety features been improved in the past few years?
There’s more emphasis on the electrical safety such as arc flash, separation of high and low voltage and ergonomic/max weight/repeated motion awareness.
What are the Top 3 actions processors that should be put into practice to achieve a perfect record zero employee accidents when working with packaging technology?