Preventive maintenance plans are simply plans put in place to ensure all recommended and required preventive maintenance is performed on the tools and equipment in your facility. This can include everything for personal protective equipment to power tools to massive generators. Basically, everything within your facility will wear, and preventive maintenance is designed to prolong the life your equipment while maintaining the efficacy of the safety protocols of the devices.

Unfortunately, if you do not already have a well structured preventive maintenance plan in place, establishing one can be difficult. You need to inventory your entire facility down to the serial number in an effort to determine both the minimum manufacturer recommended maintenance and the industry standards for the equipment. Next, you need to design a system which requires daily checks and procedure verifications to ensure everything is running smoothly and properly maintained. Finally, you need to create a program designed to allow you to introduce new equipment into the preventive maintenance plan and remove old equipment.

The hassle of creating a preventive maintenance plan is, however, far outweighed by the benefits. You reduce your bottom line, help ensure employee health and safety, and increase the life of your equipment. Further, a well designed and implemented preventive maintenance plan will help you comply with just in time and six sigma standards.

If you have any questions about establishing a preventive maintenance plan or replacing outdated placards, please contact us. If you have anything to add in relation to the benefits of a preventive maintenance plan, please leave a comment.

The Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration has proposed $119,350 in fines for Fairview Contractors as a result of seven health and safety violations. These violations were uncovered during an inspection which came as the result of a fatality on a worksite on November 14, 2013. The employee fell from a scaffold 17 feet to his death while performing roofing work.

“This was a needless and avoidable loss of a worker’s life. While guardrails and fall arrest systems were present at this work site, they were not used and were thus useless,” said Mary Hoye, OSHA’s area director for central and western Massachusetts. “Fatalities such as this will stop only when employers supply and ensure the use of effective and legally required fall protection safeguards on all job sites at all times.”

In this case, the employer did provide the correct equipment, however it was not properly made available to employees. And while this may sound absurd, it is actually quite common, especially in non-permanent worksites. For this reason, it is important for anyone who owns a business which is active in multiple worksites, to have a comprehensive safety and health management system in place which is properly disseminated to all relevant employees. A man’s life was lost, a company’s reputation tarnished, and a hefty fine was levied due to worksite carelessness, rather than a true misunderstanding of regulations.

If you have any questions about establishing a safety and health management system, please contact us so that we can help you protect your business. If you have anything to add about the importance of a health and safety management plan or about the case against Fairview Contractors, please leave a comment.

The purpose of a preventive maintenance program is to help stop equipment from breaking down and malfunctioning before it begins to show signs of wear. A good preventive maintenance program includes multiple checks of  the equipment over multiple time periods. So, there should be daily checks, weekly checks, monthly checks, and so forth. Manufacturer instructions and recommendations should be a consideration when establishing a preventive maintenance program, as well.

Preventive maintenance programs save employers money over time by extending the life of the company equipment. Equipment which is properly maintained is less likely to break down. For this reason, preventive maintenance programs also lessen the likelihood a piece of equipment will need to be repaired. This creates another cost savings opportunity.

But perhaps most importantly, preventive maintenance programs save employers money by creating a safer work environment. They create a safer work environment by creating a system which ensures that safety mechanisms are in place and functional. Just like machines can break down over time, so too can safety mechanisms on these machines.

OSHA requires routine maintenance of a number of different types of equipment. If this maintenance is not performed and you receive a citation relating to one of these machines, additional citations could be coming.

If you have any questions about how to establish a preventive maintenance program, or if you would like help in establishing that plan, please contact us. And if you have anything to add about the importance of a preventive maintenance program, please leave a comment.

Preventive maintenance can help reduce replacement costs over the life of your machinery. It can also keep the machinery up to code and help to ensure your employees are safe while using machinery at your facility. Properly maintaining your machinery can be as simple as properly oiling chains, cleaning residue, or checking fluid levels. But ensuring your staff are properly following, or even know about, the required maintenance is not always easy.

This is why our clients utilize preventive maintenance placards. These placards can be affixed directly to your machinery, or placed nearby, and allow employees to be certain they are performing required daily tasks to keep your machinery running properly. Based upon the maintenance requirements, you can create a system on the placard which would require employees to initial completion of each task as they perform it, daily. This would allow you to inspect the completion of each task, and would hold employees accountable for each task.

By ensuring these tasks are completed daily, your machines will run better, longer, and their safety features will continue to work properly. By ensuring your machines are properly maintained, you will see a significant cost savings in the way of replacing machinery, and you will not have the same risk of injury as machines age.

If you have any questions about your preventive maintenance plan, or if you would like more information on our placards, please contact us. If you would like to add anything about the importance of preventive maintenance or the importance of establishing an appropriate plan for ensuring the preventive maintenance is performed, please leave a comment.

Preventative maintenance is often viewed as an annoying chore which does nothing to help the company. Some companies cherry pick which tasks they will and will not follow, while others completely ignore the manufacturer’s recommendations. But what ignoring some or all of these tasks does, is allows for certain parts to wear prematurely.

These prematurely warn parts can lead to any one of a number of potential issues down the road. From a bottom line standpoint, they can lead to equipment breaking down earlier than expected. This can mean costly repairs or even replacements. In the event of repairs, improperly maintained equipment may not be covered under warranty.

Inconsistent preventative maintenance can also have an impact on employee safety. Many of the parts, especially the wearable parts, in machinery are for the attached safety features. By allowing safety devices to prematurely wear, they may no longer work properly. This will not, like in the case of a required operating part, cause the system to stop working. And in many cases, there will not even be a system generated warning. Instead, the only way to find out is when the device is needed, which is often too late.

For these reasons, it is important to actively monitor the preventative maintenance being performed on your company’s machines. To do this, all that is required is a quick perusal of the operating manuals and other documents which came with all of your machinery, and charts for each machine which will allow you to mark off when all required maintenance is completed.

If you have any questions about the preventative maintenance procedures at your workplace, or to schedule an appointment for us to review your plans, please contact us. If you have anything to add about the importance of preventative maintenance, please leave a comment.

Preventative maintenance is, perhaps, the most overlooked aspect of a company safety plan. There are no specific OSHA standards covering preventative maintenance, and it doesn’t “feel” like a safety issue. But time and time again, organizations which routinely maintenance their machinery as per the manufacturer’s guidelines are better prepared for an audit, and have fewer potential citations.

This is because the machinery in a facility where the staff is adhering to proper preventative maintenance is less likely to have a dangerous fault. There are two reasons for this. First, the machinery is being properly examined on a routine basis, so if there is a fault that does not interfere with the usability of the machine, it will be spotted. In a facility which does not maintain the machinery, that fault might go unnoticed. The second reason is that these maintenance tasks help to keep the machines, and their safety procedures, working properly. This means that these facilities are less likely to experience a malfunctioning safety device, and should a safety device stop working, it will be found in a timely manner.

So with all of this in mind, it is pretty obvious that properly tracking and maintaining machinery is an important task. But many business owners feel that this task is too cumbersome, and that it is easier to take a chance on the equipment. But in reality, preventative maintenance is extremely easy to monitor and track. All that is required is to determine what the preventative maintenance requirements are, and to then have a preventative maintenance placard drawn up and affixed to the devices.

If you need some help in establishing your preventative maintenance plan, or would like some placards created, please contact us. And if you have anything to add about the importance of preventative maintenance, please leave a comment.

Preventative maintenance on machinery and equipment is an easy way to save some serious money on repair and replacement costs. It is also a fantastic way to ensure compliance with safety regulations, helping business owners avoid unnecessary fees from OSHA and from litigation brought on by employees.

In order to see the full benefits of preventative maintenance, it is important for a business owner to create a preventative maintenance plan and include it in the company Safety and Health Management System. This ensures that any individuals involved in the safety and welfare of your staff will be aware of the required maintenance procedures, and can help enforce said policies. It is also important to include regular, formal training for all employees so that they understand their role in the maintenance of machinery.

As for creating the plan, it is important to catalog each item in your facility, noting who uses it, how often, and for what purpose. Then, you need to learn the required maintenance for each item, including the frequency, based upon the current use. Finally, a schedule of maintenance must be created and placed onto a placard which can be left at the machine and updated daily to validate that the scheduled maintenance is complete.

With these easy steps, any business can run more efficiently and save business owners a substantial sum of money in repair, replacement, and work place injury costs. If you have any questions about how a formal preventative maintenance plan could help your business, please contact me. And please feel free to leave a comment if you have anything to add.

Thought often overlooked, preventative maintenance should be of serious concern to every business owner and safety team. Properly maintaining machinery can increase the life of machinery, decrease the repair costs, and ensure safety protocols remain effective. The best safety equipment in the world is made ineffective with time if not properly maintained.

For maximum efficiency, preventative maintenance should be included in any Safety and Health management System. These systems are designed to ensure safety at every level in a company, and it is rare that you can include in your Safety and Health Management System something that is also so important to your company’s bottom line. But following manufacturer defined routine maintenance really does cut costs while keeping the workplace safer.

If preventative maintenance is not currently a part of your Safety and Health Management System, it is quite easy to incorporate it. First, you need to go through all of your machinery, inventorying exactly what you have, Then, you have to find out what the required maintenance is for each item. Finally, you just add preventative maintenance placards to each device, and create a section in the Safety and Health Management System dedicated to the procedures around following these placards.

If you are ready to establish a preventative maintenance plan for your company, or want more information on how it will benefit you, specifically, feel free to contact us and we can walk you through the entire process. If you have established a preventative maintenance plan for your business and would like to share your thoughts on the topic, please leave a comment.

By properly maintaining your company’s machinery, you can significantly reduce repair and replacement costs on your equipment. You can also help to ensure your machinery will stay up to code, based upon OSHA regulations, and thus help to make certain your facility is a safe place for your employees to work.

Preventative maintenance is, unfortunately, too often overlooked in Safety and Health Management Systems. But to overlook preventative maintenance is to do a great disservice to your company. By following manufacturer recommended maintenance procedures, you extend the life of your equipment. This includes everything from daily lubrications and system cleaning to annual system checks and part replacements. Preventative maintenance also helps to guarantee that all inbuilt safety protocols are fully functional.

If preventative maintenance is not a part of your current Safety and Health Management System, don’t fret. Adding preventative maintenance guidelines is actually quite simple. First, you need to go through all of the equipment in your facility, properly inventorying what you have. Next, you need to go through each device and determine what preventative care is required so that you can track that it is done. Finally, you need to create a preventative maintenance placard for each device to track that your employees are actually doing the required maintenance. If your current system relies upon your employees to remember what devices to service and when, you are leaving yourself open to potential issues from human error. A placard reduces this risk, as employees do not need to remember each system’s maintenance requirements.

If you have any questions about establishing a preventative maintenance program, or if you need placards for your equipment, please contact us. If you have any information on preventative maintenance, please leave a comment.

The maintenance of your company’s machinery may not seem very important to your Safety and Health Management System at first glance, but it is actually a key component to ensuring safety. Machinery that falls into disrepair can be dangerous in a number of ways and can violate any one of a number of OSHA procedures. Further, improperly maintained machinery will need costly repairs more often than properly maintained machines, and will need to be replaced more frequently, and both of these outcomes will directly impact your bottom line.

That is why preventative maintenance is so important to your business. Proper machine maintenance needs to be included in your safety plan, and needs to be properly monitored and regulated. Otherwise, no matter how well you plan out other things, such as your lockout tagout procedures, you will not be able to properly account for machine malfunctions, glitches, and other issues. The best safety plans in the world can not account for malfunctioning machinery that is not properly maintained.

Fortunately, preventative maintenance is not difficult to monitor and track. The first step to ensuring your machinery is consistently running properly is to determine what maintenance is required and with what frequency – every shift, daily, weekly, etc. Once you have determined the activities required and their frequency, you need to come up with a system to allow your team to track the maintenance activities they are performing on each machine.

We have found that preventative maintenance placards are the easiest way to accomplish this. With properly designed placards, you can note which activities need to be performed when, and track who is performing these tasks. Additionally, by utilizing systems such as we have outlined, you can ensure you adhere to Sigma Six, lean manufacturing standards, and just in time. If you do not currently have a preventative maintenance schedule or if you need placards, please contact us so that we can help you through this process. And if you have any advice for companies looking to set up a preventative maintenance plan, please leave a comment.