Machine Guarding

From an OSHA Safety perspective, machine guarding compliance is a high priority concern.  Typically, when injuries occur due to lack of compliant machine guarding, they tend to be significant.  As such, OSHA typically categorizes machine guarding violative conditions (citations) as Serious.  Serious citation items garner a much higher penalty amount.   In the State of California, Cal OSHA disallows a specific Employer defense when the lack of positive machine guarding was related to an accident-related citation.

Guarding Requirements are broken down into two major groups.  Those two groups are:

  • Points of Operation Guards and Other Hazardous Parts of Machinery

Machines that are operating under normal daily conditions that pose a grinding, shearing, punching, pressing, squeezing, drawing, cutting, rolling, mixing or similar action, in which an employee comes within the danger zone shall be guarded at the point of operation in one or a combination of the ways.

  • Power Transmission Equipment, Prime Movers, Machines and Machine Parts

All machines, parts of machines, or component parts of machines which create hazardous revolving, reciprocating, running, shearing, punching, pressing, squeezing, drawing, cutting, rolling, mixing or similar action, including pinch points and shear points, not guarded by the frame of the machine(s) or by location, shall be guarded.

OSTS solutions

Many of our clients rely on OSTS to conduct a facility-wide comprehensive inspection to help identify a global view of safety / OSHA compliance concerns, however, OSTS also offers hazard-focused inspections.   A hazard-focused inspection will be more cost-effective when the employer wants to tackle safety concerns in an individualized manner rather than a comprehensive manner.

As opposed to having OSTS directly identify machine guarding deficiencies and compliance issues, one of our consultants can provide classroom instruction that will empower students with knowledge of the OSHA machine guarding regulatory requirements as they apply to specific machinery and their points of operation AND moving parts and power transmission parts .  This training session will encompass an overview of general guarding requirements along with photo exercises that test the students observation skills as it relates to guarding deficiencies.

Machine safeguard training instruction combined with classroom discussion of site-specific examples may cause the class duration to fluctuate based on number of students.

Topics covered in the class:

  • Identifying Hazards
  • Controlling Hazards
  • Safeguarding Methods
  • Types of Guards
  • Types of Devices
  • Clothing & Jewelry Restrictions
  • How machine guarding correlates with lockout tagout procedures
  • Preventative Maintenance

This class is available for in-person training or online training.

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