Food and beverage manufacturing facilities face a range of potential hazards. Not only do they have the traditional fall and equipment risks of other industrial sites, but the spaces are more vulnerable to chemical spills, slick floors, and fast-moving operations. While the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has regulations in place to mitigate those risks for workers across manufacturing settings, it can seem there are so many complexities—from sub-standards that require detailed attention to necessary internal stakeholder buy-in and forming of multiple concurrent fall protection plans for adequate machine guarding and more—that a truly successful protection plan may sometime feel out of reach.
To help you achieve a revised, optimized, and effective indoor fall protection plan for food and beverage facility safety, we cover tips that you can use to organize your approach and examine every aspect of your site’s needs through assessment, action, and refinement.
1.) Assess Your Current Fall Protection Plans
First, audit your existing food and beverage facility safety plans and processes. This can include any checklist, audit processes, and policies you have. Read through them, collect them in one place, and confirm they are current. Local regulations and OSHA guidelines undergo frequent revision, so even comprehensive plans can quickly go out of date.
Review these policies and plans to uncover:
- Old or insufficient measures
- Facility growth that requires protection plan changes
- Machinery and operations changes that make current policies ineffective
- Processes or facility locations that current plans do not adequately address
This gives you a solid starting point for determining what changes or updates you should prioritize.
2.) Assess Your Injury and Incident Reports for More Data
Now, it’s time to go beyond the policies to see where indoor loading dock fall protection plans need bolstering. Review incident reports, injury reports, and any safety audit documents over the past few years. They can tell you:
- Trends that reveal ongoing gaps in your policies
- Differences in documented plans versus how teams enforce those plans
As you learn from this information, outline where your team needs to set up policies, procure equipment, offer additional training, or update fall protection procedures. Then you can rank those needs based on severity, incident frequency, and more.
3.) Create Specific Plans for Each Type of Hazard
Creating an indoor loading dock fall protection plan is overwhelming, even once you narrow the focus to ‘indoors.’ As you create policies and action plans, start by creating separate plans for each type of hazard. These types can include:
- Safety hazards from raised structures (stairways, inadequate mezzanine fall protection, loading docks, ladders, etc.), such as falling onto a stairway that doesn’t have a self-closing gate
- Machining guarding needs that mitigate the risk of falls due to equipment
- Sanitation concerns that could impede visibility or make the floor slippery
OSHA guidelines govern each of these areas. You will also need to comply with local, regional, and state regulations on each aspect. By dividing these areas, you can apply a more systematic, organized approach. You can even have different members of your team focus on each aspect and “specialize” in the different types.
4.) Think From Two Perspectives: The Building and the Machines
Now it’s time to get tactical. Think about the unique fall hazards your facility’s building and infrastructure presents, and then think about the in-use equipment. When you run some safety audits internally, you might be inspecting conditions before or after peak operational hours. This view gives you more time and space to think about installing safety gates around stairwells, painting danger zones around loading docks, or guardrails for mezzanine fall protection. But it doesn’t allow you to evaluate the facility while everything is running.
In addition, assess your facility’s needs during peak hours. Consider what machine guarding equipment you need to ensure forklifts don’t push people back into stairwells, best practices so workers don’t overload forklifts and tip through open loading dock doors, and more. For example, you can enclose areas of heavy equipment use with hinge-munt safety gates. This is also the time to evaluate spill prevention and cleanup, traffic management to prevent bottlenecks or crowding, and other variable hazards.
5.) Evaluate Potential Solutions Based on Practicality and OSHA Compliance
Unfortunately, most facilities managers run into two competing forces when they audit building safety or try to implement new changes: productivity versus safety. This mindset is common, as it can often feel like the time taken to double-check safety harnesses, wear PPE, and train workers on new workflows slows down production. However, when done correctly, good safety procedures speed up productivity because workers can focus on tasks, and there are fewer disruptions due to incidents. At the end of the day, safety compliance also isn’t optional.
To resolve any conflicts between these two priorities, evaluate potential solutions based on both practicality and compliance with OSHA guidelines. For example, self-closing gates both meet mandatory safety standards and ensure employees don’t have to double back and make sure a gate is closed. Investing in wide stainless steel ramps for your loading docks doesn’t just mean workers are safer when the height between the dock and truck is different—it also means they don’t have to gingerly watch their feet as they go back and forth. Having safety guardrails around the entire perimeter of a mezzanine means workers can focus on the tasks they’re doing, and an extra toe plate means they don’t have to think twice about their footing.
As you create your plans and start the procurement process for new equipment, get in the mindset that you never have to compromise between OSHA compliance and production. The right solutions create a path to both.
6.) Create Incentives for Compliance and Feedback
Even once your plan is complete, the work is never done. You will need to routinely revise and update your indoor fall protection plan as OSHA guidelines change, as local safety requirements evolve, and as your facility has new equipment or grows its operations. You’ll also need to make sure your plans are actually implemented. The key for both is providing the right incentives.
Dedicate a section of your plan to how you can help staff adopt the safety measures you outline and use the equipment you provide. For example:
- Offer incentives so employees provide meaningful feedback. They have a unique perspective on what makes them feel unsafe, which of your compliance tasks are too unwieldy, and what works well.
- Encourage compliance rather than discourage noncompliance. Positives will increase adoption. Rather than outlining the penalties for failing to comply with the policies, provide bonuses, make sure the equipment is easy to use (or comfortable, when it comes to wearable safety equipment), and cater to their preferences where you can. For example, if part of your facility doesn’t have good ventilation, the workers are likely to keep the dock gates wide open. Rather than penalizing it, take note and install a safety gate so everyone wins.
Set Your Plans into Motion with Safety and Fall Protection Equipment
Developing an indoor fall protection plan for food and beverage facility safety means incorporating loading dock fall protection, mezzanine fall protection, machine guarding equipment, and behavioral changes into how your company operates. The team at Fabenco is here to help with OSHA-compliant fall protection equipment that is reliable, easy to use, and effective. Contact us today to learn more about our machine guarding equipment and safety barriers.
