Across Australia, state law stipulates that anyone who supplies, designs or modifies machinery must minimise risk through design, making it safe for operators. The research revealed these decade-old legal obligations placed on engineers, designers and technicians such as electricians continue to come as a shock to many.
Swinburne surveyed engineers and technicians to evaluate the need for specialised automation safety training programs in response to reports from machine safety specialist Pilz Safe Automation that graduates were ill-equipped to deal with safety requirements. Swinburne’s Warwick Howland said university researchers confirmed manufacturing professionals lacked adequate information about machine safety.
“First, we asked the engineers whether they felt they understood the machine safety laws. In general, they were extremely confident,” he said.
“Next, we ran focus groups to gauge the depth of their knowledge and it turned out their confidence was misplaced. Their understanding of the risk assessment criteria was very patchy and almost all were confused by the mass of standards, regulations and laws.
“It was often assumed that safety had been taken care of by someone else. If a machine’s been beautifully engineered by the Germans or Italians, many take it for granted that it will comply with standards. Many were stunned to discover the extent of their obligations as importers, suppliers or resellers – even of second-hand equipment. Electricians were in disbelief that by installing a switch, they could be designated as designers. The confusion is not surprising, given the complexity of the field.”
The research findings prompted Swinburne University to establish what is thought to be Australia’s first tertiary machine and automation safety programs in May this year. With the one to two day courses regularly oversubscribed, Swinburne will expand the program in 2006 to meet swelling demand.
“Despite extra seminars to augment the courses, we are turning people away,” Mr Howland said. “There are so few experts in the field to run the courses. Frank Schrever from Pilz, who has been instrumental in the program from the beginning, is one of the few who has the depth of knowledge needed – if only we could clone him, we would.”
Mr Howland said he expected the shortfall in specialised training would be an ongoing challenge for industry as new technologies emerged and laws and standards continued to evolve. As Manufacturer’s Monthly went to print, the draft revision of Australia’s principal machine safety standard, AS 4024.1 was closing for comment.
“Each time laws and standards are updated, you need to filter out what has changed, ponder the impact it will have on you and then work out how to deal with it – a very time consuming process that’s beyond most of us unless we get help from an expert,” said Mr Howland, himself an engineer.
“It’s a challenge no one can afford to ignore even though it’s a real departure from traditional engineering thinking. Rather than focusing purely on sound engineering principles, you have to concern yourself with human behaviour because people are not perfect and make mistakes. We need to remove the possibility of human error from the equation, not just to make sure we’re covered when something goes wrong but to minimise the possibility of it happening at all.
“You’re much better off sitting in front of someone explaining how to design out risk than in front of a judge telling you what you should have done once it’s too late. Or worse, trying to explain what happened to someone’s family.”
