You could poke your eye out

October 11th, 2009

(Note: this post was due Friday, but delayed.)

I received by e-mail notice that one of our plants in another country had experienced a near-miss. A hoist being operated had failed, causing the load to fall to the ground. The problem was that a safety stop that limited the highest (shortest line) point of the hoist had worn out because the hoist had been topped out on a regular basis, and then whithout this stop the tackle on the hoist had knocked into the anchor point on the hoist until that broke, too.

I think it is quite a good idea for Acme to communicate these safety incidents throughout the entire company. It brings home that all those hazardous things that could happen sometime do happen sometimes. Some time ago we heard that a forklift operator in another plant had knocked into one leg of some racking, and the failure of that one leg brought down the whole row in a chain reaction. We are not talking about retail store racking; we’re talking industrial racking with steel verticals bigger and stronger than the structural members of your house.

You know what? I’ve knocked into something on a forktruck before.