Workplace Equipment Hazards

Workplace Equipment Hazards

• Entrapment: limbs or body parts may be caught in parts of the work equipment
• Impact: body parts or whole body can be crushed by moving parts of the equipment
• Contact: body or body parts can come into contact with hot or abrasive surfaces or sharp edges
• Entanglement: jewelry, hair, or loose clothing can be caught up inside working parts of the equipment
• Ejection: loose parts of the machinery can fly off and hit a worker or those in the vicinity of the machine

Machine Operator Responsibilities

• Monitoring and maintenance of machinery and equipment
• Training of new and junior machine operators
• Conducting routine inspections
• Setting up machines and ensuring calibration to start a production cycle
• Controlling and adjusting machine settings and speed
• Inspecting to ensure precision
• Testing operation of machines periodically
• Fixing issues that might occur during the shift
• Checking output to identify any machine-related mistakes or errors
• Keeping record of approvals and defective units of final products
• Maintaining activity logs

Machine Operator Skills

• Effective communication skills (speaking, writing, active listening, and taking instruction)
• Good leadership skills
• Effective training skills
• Problem-solving skills
• Mechanical skills
• Time management
• Attention to detail to identify maintenance, product, and/or operations issues
• Ability to stand, sit, or be in physically demanding positions for long periods of time

Lifting Equipment

• Designed to lift substantial loads and heavy objects (e.g., cranes, forklifts)
• Helps increase worker safety and saves time and effort in moving materials and objects
• Can move items horizontally or vertically
• Different types of lifting equipment are designed to do a specific lifting job
• Can move building material, pallets, or other equipment