| 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…
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’ 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. Take for example the pandemic. Several routine inspections and servicings were put on hold during the lockdown, and the fact that there were so many incidents when factories and manufacturing units opened back up, only goes to show that these timely checks are important and a must. Hence, not only is it important to ensure that the checks are done, but also to stay up to date with the changes and effectively prevent any kind of mishap from occurring.
Sukrit Bharati, MD, Virtuoso Optoelectronics Limited (VOEPL)
Recognising the current gaps
The Factories Act 1948 applies to every factory that has 20 or more workers. However, irrespective of the rules that the law enforces, it also becomes the responsibility of every worker to individually take care of themselves and their coworkers. Some of the most basic things that can be done to ensure safety at the workplace, especially on the factory floor of any manufacturing unit, is to keep work areas clean, use the right tools for the job and ensure that you wear the proper apparel as well as props like helmets, gloves and boots to match your task at hand. Additionally, ensuring that chemicals, wherever used, are properly labelled and stored under the right conditions is important. The lack of any enforcement of law when it comes to violations of the Factories Act 1948 or any other laws encourages and allows for owners, supervisors and managers of manufacturing units or factories to take a more relaxed approach. However, it is equally important to understand that the factory is also under a lot of pressure to deliver products as multiple supply chains may depend on it. Hence,
taking the right judgement call becomes crucial. Often ignored, but equally, if not more, important is the well-being of a worker working absolutely any job. Managing stress and ensuring that the workers are mentally and emotionally healthy allows for them to be more
productive, alert and aware of things that could endanger their lives in the workplace. Awareness around different kinds of mental stresses factory workers could face is step one, as many are often unaware of any mental stressors. The next step would be to have on-ground counselling via a counsellor to better manage that stress and deal with it correctly. The benefits of this are umpteen.
Government intervention needed
Celebrating safety awareness month and/or week is not enough to ensure that workplaces are and continue to remain safe. Stringent policies around violation of the safety norms are also not a complete solution, as nurturing MSMEs is equally important. Thus, the most important requirement remains basic guidelines for safety in all new machines that are being manufactured. Moreover, detailed trainings and
awareness about health and safety should be made easily available, which is very difficult for a MSMEs to make on their own. Government intervention in the form of setting up laws is not the only solution; changing the culture, educating the sector and installing correct guidelines at the product/machine design level need to be incorporated. Training is one of the easiest ways that the government can effectively inform and protect employees as well as organisations. Providing visual and print materials, making detailed training modules/videos for all kinds of safety precautions and drafting guidelines for all common tools, products and machines will make factory equipment safe and reliable. This can be achieved via regular awareness camps, TVCs, posters and more.
Futuristic views
It is a lot easier today to make workplaces safer than it was a decade ago. Technology of various kinds allows fo companies to not only find ways to minimise risk but also deal with accidents and mishaps better. Automation and improved equipment design have allowed for heightened safety in several industries. With everything happening at the click of a button today, physical harm to the worker in terms of their exposure to risk has been considerably reduced. This is not to say that catastrophic accidents or mishaps do not happen, but our ability to predict and prevent them has increased. Thus, further technological advancement will only aid the prevention of accidents further, as long as they are used in the right way and at the right time. Factories, if designed for efficiency, will change the game for their respective industries; however, even one accident can set their progress years behind.
