Safety first in your factory: Five easy steps to determine which safety switches are best

Are you a plant manager who knows you need safety switches on your equipment, but just don’t know how to select the best ones for the job? The process may not be as daunting as you may have originally thought.

 Honeywell offers some guidelines for methodically making sound safety switch choices.

One of the most stressful, regretful and disastrous events a plant manager can experience is the injury of a colleague due to an accident. In this day and age of “too many things to do and too little time to do them,” sometimes the job of keeping a manufacturing plant safe takes a second chair to cranking out product. But if just a few minutes of conscious examination and planning could prevent just one injury, wouldn’t it be time well spent? Not only could a little forethought help prevent a needless tragedy, but it could prevent the fallout that inevitably follows an industrial accident such as OSHA inspections and fines, bad press and loss of productivity.

Call any distributor who carries safety switches, and they will tell you that the purchase of these products is usually triggered by one of two situations. One, someone has been injured and the plant is scrambling to eliminate the hazard. Or two, the plant is being proactive to identify potential risks and is taking steps to reduce these risks before accidents happen. It’s pretty obvious that it is better to be in the latter category. And, thankfully, good help is not far away. A good distributor will work with you to help you develop and implement a safety switch/safety lockout plan to help reduce these risks