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Manufacturing facility safety depends on maintaining constant awareness of load capacities for various materials and machinery. Overloaded equipment and improper load control can lead to numerous safety risks, leaving employees exposed to various crush, struck-by, caught-between, and other injuries.
It can also render equipment inoperable or damage materials and the facility. Proper load measurement for manufacturing helps your staff stabilize and balance heavy loads, keep machinery from functioning erratically, and instantly know when they've reached safe loading thresholds.
The Foundations of Safe Load Control
There are many important steps safety managers and their staff must keep in mind to consistently manage loads safely. In almost any manufacturing facility, the following precautions are essential for safe materials handling and storage:
- Verify material binding or lifting straps are secure and flat/kink-free along their entire length
- Test your lifting equipment, including load hooks and slings, with smaller weights before engaging maximum capacity
- Keep loads centered on palettes and forks, especially for wide or oblong shapes
- Position loads as far back against a forklift's mast as possible, and keep loads tilted slightly up and backwards
- Remove the area of all debris and materials not strictly necessary for safe lifts and movements
- Move loads at the lowest position to accomplish the task
- Limit stacking height as much as functionally possible
- Ensure riggers know the location of any emergency shutoff and manual override mechanisms
Safety managers must also ensure their staff never uses any lifting/hoisting equipment that's (A) in disrepair and/or (B) hasn't fulfilled its most recent inspection, testing, and certification requirements.
These precautionary measures help control loads of virtually any weight. Yet there are also many times when it's necessary to know exactly how much weight you're attempting to move. Several of the most common examples of these scenarios for manufacturers include:
- Inherently imbalanced loads or objects
- When loads appear larger and heavier than expected
- Loads with irregular attachment points and/or lifting requirements
- Positioning requirements placing lifting equipment in an awkward, insecure position
- Matching loads to a vehicle's or platform's maximum load capacity
- Protecting conveyors and other manufacturing equipment from heavy materials
- Normal, anticipated lifting and handling requirements for heavy loads
Measuring Loads: An Added, Sometimes Necessary, Precaution
For these and any other difficult lifting scenarios, the first step is to obtain an accurate load cell measurement. Load cells provide a fast and accurate reading for load weight, helping safety managers and their staff fulfill a number of essential functions for manufacturing facility safety:
- Directly inform staff of a load's weight
- Compare a load's weight to rated capacities of equipment or surfaces
- Activate notifications, alarms, or automatic shutoffs at unsafe loading thresholds
Proper load measurements also give staff the foresight to know when to reposition loads, adjust lifting/movement speeds, or find alternatives to lifting or hoisting unsafe loads.
Controlling Loads Safely, Efficiently, and Accurately
Implementing load limit controls is important for manufacturing facility safety across numerous sectors. Almost every manufacturing industry must safely support consistent processes that involve lifting or positioning heavy loads, such as:
- Palletizing and storing items at height, such as on mezzanines
- Handling of manufactured items
- Shipping and receiving
- Installing heavy machinery
- Adjusting manufacturing or assembly floor layouts
In addition to basic safety considerations, accurate load cell measurement can help facilities perform all these functions quickly and effectively. Managers can then more effectively plan safe and efficient lifting strategies, saving valuable time while preventing mistakes.
Safer lifting also improves your ability to meet a range of compliance requirements, including the duty to have fall protection (and falling object protection) and take reasonable measures to prevent injuries at all times.
Improving Compliance Through Accurate Load Measurements
Each facility owner and safety manager must thoroughly reference the specific OSHA, state plan, or CCOHS regulations affecting their manufacturing facility. In all cases, the need for accurate load cell measurement, where required, depends on properly constructed and calibrated equipment.
Selecting a Properly Rated Load Cell
While manufacturing facility safety regulations don't require load measuring and testing as heavily as other industries, such as construction or marine cargo terminals, it becomes necessary in a number of instances. In fact, safe lifting and materials handling doesn't always relate to massive, oversized loads. Manual lifting equipment (even if not unassisted manual lifts) also invokes strict load capacities.
Whether a load limit is on the order of hundreds or thousands of pounds makes no difference for compliance. That's why leading load cell manufacturers design their devices to accommodate a wide range of weight limits and accuracy thresholds. Based on your facility's most common load weights, you can select multifunctional load cell devices with maximum limits anywhere between 400 lbs (200 kg) and 250t.
Higher capacity load cells often also have tighter accuracy thresholds (up to ±0.1%). This may be necessary for more accurate testing and calibration purposes, or when load weights most closely approach equipment limits. Further, the load cell is sometimes just one component of a load cell measurement system.
The fastest and most reliable way to meet your requirements is to consult with our experienced dynamometer manufacturers and load testing/calibration specialists.
Meeting Load Capacity Requirements Accurately and Efficiently
Throughout our 70-year history, the Tractel family of companies has helped partners in numerous industries achieve accurate load measurement for manufacturing and overcome load capacity challenges. Some of the most urgent load-related compliance requirements our dynamometers fulfill in manufacturing environments include:
- Ensuring loads don't exceed an industrial vehicle's rated capacities (OSHA 1910.178[o][2]), something for both lifting and towing (as when load height obstructs the operator's view, per 1910.178[n][4])
- Modifying load capacities for industrial trucks retrofitted with non-factory front-end equipment (re: 1910.178[a][5])
- Helping manufacturers meet safe working loads for ladder stands and platforms (1910.23[e][1][iii]), walking-working surfaces (1910.22[b]), and other mainstays of manufacturing facilities
- Ensuring employees know exactly how much weight they're asked to handle, which can dramatically reduce the chance of physical harm – the latter being a hard requirement under the Occupational Safety and Health Act's General Duty Clause
Accurate Load Measurement for Manufacturing Safety and Compliance
Achieving safer work conditions is much easier and more effective with the right tools on hand. Obtaining a proper load measurement for manufacturing facility challenges is often the only realistic option for quickly and efficiently resolving load capacity conflicts – where a single uncertain metric can lead to work-stopping challenges.
Prepare for known and unknown load capacity issues with the industry's most reliable and accurate load cell measurement systems. For assistance choosing a load cell rated for the most common load capacities affecting your facility's operations, contact us today.