Feature Health & safety
Handling company solves kiln cart safety problem
Stoke-On-Trent, in Staffordshire. David Davies the kiln manager at Steelite noticed a manual handling issue in the manoeuvring of the kiln carts. Two men would move the carts in and out of the kilns which required care and precision as the loads are extremely fragile. This made the oper- ation a difficult task. To help with this manual handling problem Tractive Power visited the factory to help find a solution.
Tractive Power’s TP250 is helping with the manoeuvrability of kiln carts for a Staffordshire manufacturer
Materials handling company Tractive Power has helped Steelite International, a specialist manufacturer of award winning Hotelware, to improve the health and safety of manoeuvring of kiln carts
T
ractive Power which specialises in the design and manufacture of pedestrian operated materials handling equipment went to visit to Steelite International to solve a manual handling issue. Steelite International which supplies to over
120 countries has been experiencing rapid business growth over the last few years. This growth has been achieved by its success in exports which led to Steelite investing heavily in the improvement of production and health and safety at its factory based in
After an initial analysis of the appli- cation Tractive Power were able to pro- pose a working system that provided a smooth, precise single user operation using the TP250 Tractive unit. The pedestrian tug units are battery pow- ered, pedestrian operated and designed to address manual handling issues such as pulling, pushing and manoeuvring of awkward or heavy wheeled loads in the workplace. Tractive Power designed a bespoke coupling to attach to the kiln cart which allowed the kiln cart to be moved in a safe and secure manner. Davies comments “The TP250 unit has helped stabilise the kiln cart load which now only takes one man to easily manoeuvre the loads safely into the kilns. It was the precision and con- trol that really surprised us. Tractive Power programmed the electric pusher to a perfect speed for our application and was also able to change the accel- eration and braking to ensure all aspects of the operation were gradual. Despite the Tractive unit being extremely powerful, the controllability was second to none. The operatives have noticed a vast improvement in the manual handling of the karts and we are very satisfied with the machine and how Tractive Power responded to our query.” Tractive Power T: 0560 1169920
www.tractivepower.com Enter 345
afety specialist Master Lock has highlighted the dangers of using ad-hoc protective equipment where lives are at risk from the acti- vation of machinery or the unexpected release of energy or chemicals. Physically locking the controls of machinery or processes to pre- vent them being activated when workers might be exposed to danger – known as Lock Out/Tag Out (LOTO) – is a widely adopted accident prevention strategy in industry. However, unless such practices form part of a coherent overall safety strategy, vulnerable workers may not be fully protected. Using shop-bought padlocks as personal safety devices is a potentially fatal practice, warns Master Lock. “Effective LOTO procedures ultimately rely on the integrity of indi- vidual locking devices,” comments Master Lock’s European market- ing manager, Kieran MacCourt. “That’s why it’s critical that only locks designed for safety applications should be used in the LOTO role. A lock that breaks easily, can be circumvented, or removed by someone other than the key holder, can be more dangerous than no
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Industrial padlocks keep dangerous equipment under lock and key S
lock at all because it can engender a false sense of security. “Most padlocks available to the public were not designed or intended to be used in life-threatening situations,” says MacCourt. “Industrial environments are invariably harsh and frequent heavy use in these environments subjects the padlock to high levels of wear, leading to failure and potentially lethal consequences.” Many padlocks designed for domestic use also have compara- tively simple locking mechanisms, meaning the chances of keys other than the original being able to unlock it are unacceptably high. Master Lock’s Safety Series padlocks have been designed specif-
ically for LOTO applications in industrial environments. As well as being extremely robust and clearly identifiable as safety devices, Safety Series locks have non-duplicable keys meaning they can only be removed by the worker who placed them. Master Lock
www.safetyseries.co.uk
Enter 346 MAY 2012 Factory Equipment
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