Machinery Safety Information

Overview

All Risk Assessment methods for industrial machinery do the following:

Identify hazards

Assess risk

Frequency of exposure

Severity of possible injury

Ability to avoid the hazard

Reduce risks

Document results

For the 2010 release of ANSI B11.0 - Safety of Machinery, General Requirements and Risk Assessments, there is now a American National Standards Institute (ANSI) standard for performing risk assessments.

Benefits

There are a number of major benefits of performing a Risk Assessment:

It helps to meet all OSHA regulations and ANSI standards

It provides a Cost Savings

Significantly less risk of injuries to users

Intangible Benefits

Cost Savings

Many people do not realize the significant cost savings that results from a carefully-performed Risk Assessment, but studies have repeatedly shown that a Risk Assessment save a company money. In particular, a study by Liberty Mutual showed that for every dollar spent on Safety and Risk Assessments, the company received 3 dollars worth of benefits.

OSHA is even more positive about the benefits of Risk Assessments. According to OSHA’s office of Regulatory Affairs, every dollar spent on Safety saves a company $4 to $6.

Risk Assessment of a machine is the best single method to reduce the hazards, and to design a safe machine.

Results

The outcome of completing the risk assessment process should be:

A clear understanding of risk(s) including the potential severity of harm and the probability of the occurrence of harm;

Machinery with risks reduced to an acceptable level;

Risk reduction measures appropriate to the circumstances;

Documentation of the risk assessment.

It is strongly recommended that a Risk Assessment be performed in accordance with ANSI B11.0 - Safety of Machinery, General Requirements and Risk Assessments, as this is the best ANSI standard for Risk Assessments. It is also the method specified in ANSI B11.19 (2010) Performance Criteria for Safeguarding , which has become the de facto standard for machine safeguarding.

For training on Risk Assessments for machinery and equipment, see Risk Assessment Training