How CQ’s Solution for Hazard Analysis Can Help Your Manufacturing Business

The manufacturing shop floor is abuzz with activity involving the running of machinery and processes and the movement of people and materials. Yet, while most days may pass off calmly, potential hazards lurk in various forms that can turn into incidents causing:

• Injury or death of a worker
• Stopping of work temporarily or for longer – depending on the seriousness of the incident

These, in turn, cause delays, loss of production, revenue losses, litigation, penalties, and reputation loss depending on the severity of the incident. However, many of these hazards can be minimized through periodic hazard analysis, implementing controls, and establishing a culture of safety and quality.

ComplianceQuest’s Quality, Health, Safety, and Environment (QHSE) management solution enables businesses to identify the hazards in their organization, assess the risk, prioritize these risks, and implement mitigative controls.

Common Hazards in Manufacturing, Especially on the Shop Floor

Some of the common hazards in the manufacturing industry include:

1. Slips and Falls: This could be caused by cluttered walkways, dripping oil and wet surfaces, open cables and wires, working at heights without support, and so on.
2. Collisions: As per OSHA, the movement of industrial material without machine guards has been found to be one of the leading causes of injuries (either because of collisions or being stuck between heavy machinery)
3. Equipment Malfunctions: Machinery can cause injuries due to not being used properly or poor maintenance resulting in malfunctioning. This can also bring down the quality of the product being manufactured.
4. Chemicals: The use of potentially harmful chemicals in the manufacturing process is another source of risk to the employees.
5. Electrical: Many types of machinery, power tools, and other electrical devices are used in a manufacturing facility that poses numerous hazards due to poor handling and maintenance.
6. Ergonomic Injuries: Some tasks require repeated action, which can cause musculoskeletal damage in the employees performing those tasks. This needs to be factored in, and control measures must be implemented to minimize the risk.
7. Cybersecurity of IoT/IP devices: With the proliferation of IoT devices, cybersecurity can be a serious concern and requires a robust cyber safety culture as well as constant vigilance.

The Need for a Streamlined Hazard Analysis Process

The presence of so many hazards can impact employee safety, product quality, as well as the overall operational health of the manufacturing unit. This makes it imperative for the manufacturing company to identify and understand the hazards, and implement appropriate control measures. There is also a regulatory requirement envisaged under cGMP, OSHA, FDA, ISO, and others specific to the industry the business falls under.

Called Hazard Analysis, OSHA defines it as the process of collecting and evaluating hazard-related information and the factors contributing to it. Using the job hazard analysis technique, hazards can be identified before they occur by focusing on the worker, the task, the tools, and the work environment.

The manufacturing business must conduct a thorough and systematic review of its plant operating procedures for identifying the risks across various processes. This is important to identify measures that can help improve safety, prevent downtime, and protect the environment in which the unit operates.

OSHA recommends that for developing a successful safety and health management program, the following four parameters are met:

• Involvement of the management leadership and employees
• Analysis of the worksite
• Hazard prevention and control mechanisms
• Training for safety and health

Automating the Hazard Analysis Process with ComplianceQuest

Hazard analysis should be established right from the beginning of a project and continue throughout the product’s lifecycle to ensure sufficient control measures are in place at the various stages. However, hazard analysis can be a very complex time and resource-consuming process, if undertaken manually. Using a cloud-based QHSE solution – such as the one we offer at ComplianceQuest – to automate hazard analysis workflows can help with seamless access to data, create an end-to-end view of all potential hazards, and potential impact while identifying the correct mitigative measures. It’ll also help streamline the process of taking appropriate actions.

The ComplianceQuest QHSE solution can help with:

• Defining the parameters for hazards analysis
• Reviewing processes end-to-end
• Identifying and prioritizing risks based on the severity
• Recommending control measures to mitigate the risks

Specifically, ComplianceQuest’s Incident Management Software can serve as a repository of past injuries, accidents, near misses, and observations that facilitates analysis to help identify trends. It also has root cause analysis capability that helps to digitize the process, providing all stakeholders with insights into areas of concern and taking suitable action. Documenting the findings, facilitating collaboration and communication, scheduling audits, and recording the learnings for corrective and preventive action are other aspects of the system.

The ComplianceQuest solution enables the following types of hazard analysis:

• Function Failure Analysis to identify a system whose performance does not meet a specified standard
• Cause-Consequence Diagrams to determine the cause for an incident and its impact on future events
• Hazard and Operability Studies to examine complex proposed or existing processes or operations in a structured and systematic method to recognize and assess risks to employees or equipment
• Fault Tree Analysis of an unwanted incident using Boolean logic to connect several lower-level events
• Event Tree Analysis is an inductive procedure that reveals the possible outcomes of an accidental (initiating) event based on the installation and proper functioning of the safety barrier.

ComplianceQuest’s Document, Training, and Audit Management solutions supplement the hazard analysis process by:

• Facilitating proper documentation of the analysis and its findings for further action
• Identifying skill gaps and enabling training
• Managing internal and external audits end-to-end to avoid nonconformance

Being cloud-based, it also facilitates easier collaboration between different departments as well as provides access to dashboards and reports for a quick understanding of the risks. It also helps with regulatory compliance requirements and ensures a safer working environment, improving productivity, employee engagement, and business growth.

To know more about ComplianceQuest’s Hazard Analysis capabilities, click here: https://www.compliancequest.com/hazard-analysis-assessment/

Request a demo: https://www.compliancequest.com/online-demo/

Contact us to find out how ComplianceQuest can ensure continuous improvement in your manufacturing business: https://www.compliancequest.com/contact-us/