FEATURE MACHINE SAFETY & HAZARDOUS AREAS


HOW THE PLASTICS INDUSTRY IS RAISING THE SAFETY BAR


approach for the industry. “There are risk assessments for every


job, but the trouble is that everybody does it differently. What we want to try and have is a common approach,” explains Flowers. “Customers want risk assessments, method statements etc. The idea has been to try and produce a set of documents with the same content. This will hopefully make life a little easier for everyone involved.”


With the UK’s plastics industry turning over £23.5 billion each year and employing approximately 222,000 across 6,000 businesses, it’s no surprise that continued efforts are being made by industry figures to improve health and safety measures


ut with Brexit looming and an increased focus on sustainability, there are new challenges on the horizon. As new risks arise due to changing processes, organisations need to manage health and safety with the same degree of expertise and to the same standards as other core business activities. Nigel Flowers, President of the Polymer


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Machinery Manufacturers and Distributors Association (PMMDA) and managing director of Sumitomo (SHI) Demag UK discusses how industry is driving improvements in processing to help overcome these challenges and the impact of new safety standards guidelines set to be released in the coming months.


SAFER SYSTEMS The plastics industry has an exceptional health and safety record, as demonstrated by BPF accident survey statistics. However, no company can predict what is around the corner, notes Flowers. In the case of service teams, although the engineers themselves are well trained and qualified, a group of machinery suppliers – Sumitomo included – found


22 SEPTEMBER 2019 | IRISH MANUFACTURING


that potentially the most hazardous aspect of an assignment was getting to and from site. Contributing risk factors included long hours, driver fatigue and use of mobile phones in vehicles. In a bid to eradicate these risks, the


suppliers defined the Safe System of Work guidelines, which have been updated and will be released under the PMMDA umbrella this summer. In addition to outlining how best to deal with travel, the guidelines aim to help define who is responsible for the machine at any given time. “The permit to work system is especially important, to avoid any ambiguity over who has control of the machine. For example, is it the customer or the service engineer? As a next step, we are planning to develop a common approach to Permit to Work schemes to make sure it is crystal clear who is in control,” comments Flowers. Additional topics covered in the Safe


System of Work guidelines include reporting procedures, risk control measures, the work at height regulations, and PPE. These are all tied together with the intention of producing a unified


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Ensuring the mould is secured correctly with the correct number of poles on a magnetic clamp system is vital for making the process safe


BREXIT BOOM New safety standards for injection moulding and injection mould clamping are under revision too, not only to address industry changes, but also to offset any complications posed by Brexit. “Once we leave the EU, there’s a high probability that we’ll need to maintain and develop our own British standards again,” explains Flowers. “We are in the process of converting the current BS:EN standards to the global ISO level, so that we can adopt those standards to UK law quite quickly should we need to.” The current machine safety standard


BS:EN201 includes a description of interfaces to the magnetic mould clamping systems. Once this is replaced by the ISO:20430 standard, there won’t be any requirements for magnetic clamping systems, hence the need for a further ISO standard covering these systems. “There tends to be a lot of


Sumitomo Demag www.sumitomo- shi-demag.eu


misunderstandings about magnetic clamping,” adds Flowers. “The perception is that you can put any sized mould into the machine, but that’s not true. You can’t go too small, you have to make sure that the correct number of the poles are covered by the mould to ensure the mould is secured correctly. There’s a lot to think about and these are all areas to be addressed within a standard.”


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