Hazards of Moving Equipment: The Importance of LOTO

What is moving plant?

To put it simply, moving plant is any piece of machinery or equipment that uses or releases energy. However, a chapter on Mechanical Plant breaks it down even further to include:

• Plant that processes material by way of a mechanical action that
  • Cuts, drills, punches or grinds the material
  • Presses, forms, hammers, joins or molds the material
  • Combines, mixes, sorts, packages, assembles, knits or weaves the material
• Plant that lifts or moves people or materials, e.g. conveyors, robots, pumps
• Pressure equipment, e.g. boilers, air receivers, compressors, hydraulic hoses and cylinders
• Explosive-powered tools
• Turbines
• Amusement structures.

What are the hazards associated with moving equipment?

As helpful as moving equipment can be, it can also be very dangerous. When an energy source is connected, the components of moving plant will continue to move and do their job, no matter what gets in the way. This means there are many hazards associated with moving parts of machinery, including crushing, shearing, entangling, trapping, and more!

• Crushing – where a person could be crushed between one or more moving machine components, e.g. between the ram and die of a press
• Shearing – where a person could be caught between two or more components moving past each other, e.g. scissor action
• Cutting or Severing – where a person could contact sharp surfaces or rapidly moving components
• Entanglement – where a person could become entangled in a rotating or moving component, e.g. a roller or conveyor
• Drawing-In or Trapping – where a person could be drawn in by a rotating or moving surface or surfaces, e.g. between two in-running rollers or between one roller and a fixed surface
• Impact – where a person could be struck by an object, either a controlled moving machine component or uncontrolled ejected material from a machine
• Stabbing or Puncture – where a person could contact a sharp machine protuberance, with either machine or person in motion
• Friction or Abrasion – where a person could contact a rough surface with either the surface or person in motion
• High-Pressure Fluid Injection (penetration of the skin) or Ejection – where a person may be struck by hydraulic fluid, steam or air.

How can you control the hazards associated with moving equipment?

There are a couple ways you can control the dangers of moving equipment to make it safer for personnel to work with and around. Following the hierarchy of controls, the first way is to eliminate the hazard altogether. When designing the equipment, is there a way to eliminate the hazard such as designing a way a roller can pop out if it were to pinch someone’s hand, or to enclose all exposed hazards within the machine, out of reach of personnel. If this isn’t practicable, you can also try to minimize the risk by lowering the amount of energy used. Try using a low-speed, low-pressure, or low-energy component.

The next step is to put in place administrative controls. While these are less reliable than higher-level controls like eliminating the hazard altogether, they are still extremely important in keeping personnel safe and controlling hazards. These are also extremely important to implement while maintenance or service is being performed on the moving equipment. Some examples of administrative controls you can implement are testing and isolation, permit-to-work and lockout/tagout processes, training, and supervision.

What is LOTO?

One of the best administrative isolation controls is lockout/tagout, or LOTO. LOTO ensures that all dangerous moving equipment is safely shut off and disconnected from power so it cannot be restarted while personnel are in the danger zone or while maintenance or service is still being carried out. This can include anything from shutting down electrical circuits to securing moving parts and more.

LOTO saves lives by decreasing the likelihood of mistakes, injuries, and even death by locking, labeling, and disconnecting moving plant from its power sources. Because of how important LOTO is protecting personnel, it is a required OSHA standard.

What’s the difference between lockout and tagout?

While lockout and tagout are both extremely important, and used in conjunction with one another, they are in fact, different. Tagout is the first line of defense, while lockout is the second. However, tagout should only be used with lockout devices, not on its own, unless locking out a piece of equipment is impractical. Then, and only then, can tagout be used on its own.

Lockout is what physically prevents workers from running the equipment by preventing activation or powering of the machine. You do this by securing the equipment with a lock that prohibits energy release. There are different types of locks you can use to lockout your equipment based on your scenario and what you are trying to lockout. However, no matter what lock you use, ensure that each person working with the hazardous equipment has their own separate key and lock they can lockout the machine with. A common problem is when employees use duplicate or master keys as then other workers can remove the locks and start the equipment before it is safe to do so. To prevent this, ensure each technician has their own LOTO devices with a single key and communicate that only authorized employees should remove locks and tags. This Basic LOTO Pouch by ABUS is a great start and has the basic LOTO devices each technician would need! And this Master Lock 3” Safety Padlock is keyed differently to comply with the one employee, one lock, one key directive. Lockout should always be used on moving plant during servicing and maintenance activities, faulty or inoperable equipment, and sometimes even to prevent untrained workers from using dangerous equipment.

Tagout, the first line of defense, is what alerts the workers that the equipment should not be operated. This uses a warning tag that’s attached in a visible area, advising people to not turn on the machine or power up the equipment. Shop tagout signs now!

How do you create an OSHA-compliant LOTO program?

LOTO is one of the top 10 most cited OSHA violations. Not having an OSHA-compliant LOTO program not only increases the risk of injury and death for your team but can result in fines for your company. So how do you implement an OSHA-compliant LOTO program for your company to minimize those risks? The first step is to establish and standardize energy-control processes by outlining the steps of how to disconnect each machine from its energy supply and how to install LOTO devices on said machines. You should also address how to deal with stored or re-accumulated energy. After outlining these steps for each machine, hold a training session for your staff to help them understand how to carry out these processes of securing machines and removing the energy source and how to properly use and test LOTO devices. Contact Ritz Safety today to schedule a LOTO training session for your team! Finally, employers should reevaluate their LOTO on a regular basis, no less than once a year, to see if it is still effective or if there are any changes they need to implement.

Employees should know how to use LOTO correctly when shutting down a machine for maintenance, repair, or otherwise to ensure it works effectively. The following sequence covers all steps they should follow:

1. When a machine needs to be shut down for servicing or maintenance, be sure to warn all employees that the machine needs to be removed from its energy source and locked out before any maintenance takes place. Be sure to record the names and job titles of all employees who are involved.
2. There should be an authorized employee in charge of the LOTO procedure. This employee needs to know the machine’s power source and be aware of potential energy threats and be able to control them.
3. The next step is to shut the machine down. If it is currently running, turn it off with the normal shut down procedure.
4. Next, separate the equipment from its energy source.
5. After separating the machine from its energy source, lockout and disable the energy-isolating device with individually assigned locks or programmed lockout mechanisms.
6. Then, stored energy must be discharged or restrained by grounding, blocking, bleeding down, repositioning, etc.
7. Finally, check to make sure the machine is isolated from the energy source and the LOTO device is working properly before personnel enter the hazard area by running the machine through its startup procedure and confirming it doesn’t start.

Where can I find LOTO devices to safely secure my moving equipment?

Ritz Safety has a large selection of different types of LOTO devices ranging from padlocks to lockout hasps.

Shop all LOTO devices at Ritz Safety!

Hazard examples from tapintosafety.com.au