Transition Locks
Are you all using transition locks in between LOTO procedures and when the authorized employee needs to go home for the day, or the maintenance employee doesn't have the parts to fix equipment the same shift?
Recently introduced this Transition lock to my crew and had resistance mostly from my safety minded people.
Any feedback is greatly appreciated!
Comments (4)
Yeah, I've used it in the past. It would typically be placed by either the Safety Manager or Maintenance Manager.
5 years ago I was a facility HR/HS Manager. I did that job for 15 years in a large heavy machining & assembly facility. We had about 400 employees with about 15% Machine Repairman & Electricians. Even though we had extremely good guarding on our CNCs and Screw Machines I still insisted that all Machinist and Setup (in Assembly) were also Authorized LO employees. So about 70% of all our employees were Authorized. I am now a OHS Consultant.
Ten years ago I had two huge headaches with my Lockout Program:
#1 Transition between shifts - Machine Repair, Machinists, and Setup.
#2 Electricians working on and neat live circuits. (This one scared the Shi_ out of me!)
On transition I tried everything I could think of! First, I did not think it occurred often. Our shifts butted up to each other on 3 shifts five and six days a week, no overlap. When a job went over into the next shift, and production could not let the machine sit till the next day, I got Management to authorize .3 of an hour of OT for overlap. Afternoon and Midnight shifts were ok with this, but Day (First) shift employees always insisted that they could not work over a few minutes! Then I remembered our Lock Breech Procedure which seemed to work well. So I changed the Policy so that if a job was not complete the lock stayed on at shift end. If the following shift had to continue the work the new employees locked out, and if job was completed we followed the Lock-Breech procedure. At the time Locks were $15. However, again First Shift insisted they "loved" their own locks
At about the same time we formed a Lockout Team. I assigned as their first task to settle the Transition Problem between shifts. They came up with a program to use a Transition Lock with a Lockbox. When as shift had to go home they went to their Supervisor and got the Transition Locks which was assigned to the area Supervisor. The Transition Lock keys would be placed in the box and the Supervisor would put his lock on the box.
We use a different color of lock for jobs that will be passed to the next shift. These aren't personal locks. They are kept on a rack and logged out/in at the mechanic's computer room.