Safety First!

Working in the manufacturing industry requires a great deal of skill, expertise and knowledge of how to manoeuvre around the factory floor safely and efficiently. From the top guns to the lowest rung of workers, safety protocols are in place every step of the way. Let's discuss how workplace safety plays out on the management end...

- Sukrit Bharati

The risks undertaken by manufacturing workers is immense, with potential threats from faulty and heavy machinery, chemicals and multiple other avenues. Slips, trips, falls and injuries are a part and parcel of the job; however, standard operating procedures when it comes to safety help lower the risk and deal with the situation better in a post injury scenario. Ensuring safety and preventing mishaps is a key objective of the industrial safety sector. Hence, they necessitate a proactive strategy that puts workers’ health and safety at the top of the priority list.

Awareness of Safety SOPs

India has seen too many factory mishaps over the years and a lot of it has to do with not following the standard safety operating procedures put in place by the law. While ensuring these protocols are met is the manufacturing unit or factory owner’s responsibility, every employee across all rungs of the organisation can contribute to the overall safety of the place. Reporting inconsistencies to supervisors, ensuring your own personal safety or even just checking the safety logs to make sure it is all in place at the start or end of your shift could prevent catastrophic events at these workplaces.

On the contrary, the workload on several manufacturing units is huge. Employees have to produce several highquality products in tight time-frames. Moreover. it is only fair that, occasionally, they might either find shortcuts that may put their safety at risk. The other way is to push things like broken edges or equipment servicing to a later date, because of the time crunch on hand. It is these small but seemingly looming safety issues that backfire when neglected.