If there are four words that are guaranteed to strike fear into the heart of any manufacturing leader, it’s ‘health and safety breach’. In 2016, manufacturers lost a total of 600,000 working days to workplace injury, at a cost of over £600 million (http://bit.ly/1jOkhqU).
The consequences of an accident at work have never been higher, either. New regulations introduced last year (see p28–30 of WM (MM) April 2017 magazine) mean that employers are prosecuted based on the basis of risk, rather than actual harm. This has already led to a rise in convictions, and some sizeable fines – in May, one company was fined £750,000 for failing to file an asbestos management plan, even though no workers were actually affected by the asbestos in the plant.
The effects on a business aren’t limited to fines, either. Bryan Lawrie, sales and marketing director at Arco, explains that the real issue, especially for larger businesses, is reputational damage. “Even if unsafe working practices haven’t resulted in injury to a person,
if that were to get out into the media, the damage their brand would face could be massive. There have been a number of highly publicised incidents in recent years that have really focused people’s minds on the importance of health & safety – think of Deepwater Horizon, Grenfell Tower or even the VW emissions scandal. They’re all scandalous events that have pushed the importance of safety and quality management into the mainstream.”
It’s this fear of reputational damage, says Lawrie, that has seen health & safety fly up the agendas of concerned manufacturing managers. “Boardrooms are now acutely aware of the consequences if things go wrong,” he explains. Health & safety managers are now seen as a
vital part of senior management teams, and, says Lawrie, they are becoming seen as increasingly important in contributing towards wider business decisions.
“We recently held a discussion with a number of SHE (safety, health & environment) managers from the construction industry,” he says. “I was struck by how they were framing the discussion around business in a broad sense. They could clearly explain the link between robust health & safety practices and adding value to the overall company. It was a very different conversation compared to what I’d have had five years ago. If we could start to see that in manufacturing, it would be a real turning point for the industry.”
Technology bringing new threats
A further turning point facing the industry is the growth of technology in manufacturing. Advancements in robotics have meant they are more prolific in today’s factories than ever before – and come with their own risks.
“Traditionally, robotic systems have been separated from humans to minimise the risk of injury,” says Pete Maguire, a solicitor and manufacturing commercial law specialist at Wright Hassall LLP. “However, new ISO specifications and advancements in robotic technologies mean the physical gap is narrowing, allowing for closer collaboration between robots and humans.”
This leads to a whole new range of risks facing today’s manufacturing workers. Humans and robots are set to come into even closer contact with each other – and the ramifications of any accident is a legal, ethical and financial minefield.
The first recorded person killed by a robot was Robert Williams, who was a worker at the Ford factory in Flat Rock, Michigan in 1979. When a robot at the plant malfunctioned, Williams entered the area where it was contained to investigate. The robotic arm swung out suddenly, hitting his head and killing him instantly. In this case, his family sued the robot’s manufacturers, Litton Industries, for $15 million, eventually settling out of court for $10 million. Interestingly, Ford were seen as entirely blameless for the death of their employee.
Nowadays, continues Maguire, things are a bit less clear-cut. “Technology has moved on since the 1970s,” he says. “Sensors to detect humans are now fitted as standard to most robots. The question now is, does the legal responsibility for human safety lie with the software engineers who programme the machines, or to the machine’s owner?”
This is where things get complicated. “Advancements in technology are moving faster than case law,” says Maguire. “It is therefore hard to define where legal accountability may lie.”
Thorough testing
It’s vital, therefore, that all eventualities are covered. Maguire recommends putting the software through “thorough testing”, and that both the use and limitations of the robot are identified. “These need to be agreed and signed off by both the software and mechanical engineers,” he says. “This can help determine where the fault lies in the event of a problem.”
It can also be the simple things that make a difference, Maguire continues. This starts with a company-wide focus on the changing risks to health & safety. “Businesses need to ensure appropriate health & safety procedures are followed,” he says. “This can include using cages and barriers to protect employees as well as providing the correct training and supervision when operating machinery. If the appropriate safety precautions are in place, businesses are less likely to be held accountable for injuries sustained by employees.”
Arco’s Lawrie goes even further, arguing that before long we’ll just be able to leave the robots to it. “The principal role of the SHE manager is to engineer out any risks,” he says. “What we’ll see as technology evolves is more robots doing the front-line, risky jobs, removing people from harm. We’ve seen the trend towards ‘engineering out risk’ evolve in the past four decades or so, and I think we’re about to see another quantum leap in that direction. The quicker we can move people from front-line, direct harm, the better.”
Connected technology
Instead of seeing technology as a threat to our safety, says, Thomas Negre, global director of gas detection and connected industrial worker at Honeywell Industrial Safety, why not view it as a way of better ensuring safety?
“Smartphones are now able to connect to other devices such as gas detectors,” he explains. “Even a worker who is not wearing a portable gas detector can be alerted if a gas leak is detected by a fixed device in a different part of the factory.
A safety manager can, from any location, use a smartphone to access occupational health & safety data about a specific worker and intervene if, for example, they are not wearing hearing protection where it is required.
“It is also possible to monitor a worker’s biomedical values, such as heart rate, body temperature and breathing rate, as well as their exposure levels in real-time and alert them to a potential emergency.”
This approach has advantages that should make it particularly appealing to manufacturing leaders, continues Negre.
“Manufacturers are becoming more aware of the importance of bringing more automation to safety management compliance,” he says. “Compliance management has traditionally been a paper-based process of manually inputting occupational safety & health data. There is now more awareness that this piecemeal approach to safety can ultimately put workers at risk, especially in large factories where the manual inputting of data becomes extremely difficult to manage.”
While this may seem overly complicated and unnecessary to many, opinion is changing as the new generation come through, adds Negre, echoing Lawrie’s thoughts on the growing awareness of, and concern about, health & safety. “The mindset of workers has changed dramatically in recent years and manufacturing site leaders need to meet their expectations when it comes to safety.
“Workers are also consumers, and their level of acceptance of wearable technology has increased as it has become part of their daily lives. Increasingly, they expect the safety equipment to offer the same ease-of-use to what they’re using at home, which is exactly what connected safety can help them achieve.”
Health & safety, just like the wider manufacturing industry, is moving away from its ‘analogue’ past, concludes Negre. “It has a vital role to play in the transformation of factories in the Industry 4.0 era.”
The health & safety threats have changed dramatically in recent years, thanks to the growth of robotics technology, and manufacturing workers must be aware of these. However, they should also be aware of the opportunities technology can provide in making the factories of tomorrow even safer.
