The equipment that is used in the manufacturing industry needs to be safeguarded and include the proper access structure. Not everyone within an organization should have the same access to the equipment. Allowing this to happen definitely puts your organization at risk. In order to safeguard your equipment, you should limit access according to the place they hold within the company. Here’s more information:
Who Should Have Access to Equipment?
A User shouldn’t have the same access that a Supervisor has and a Supervisor shouldn’t have the same access that an Administrator has. The level of access correlates with the chain of command. Parameters that are set by the Administrator need to be safeguarded so that they cannot be changed without permission by the Supervisor, User, or any other access title that is designated.
Today’s technology allows extra layers of “safeguarding” a manufacturing environment; remote monitoring of machine operation, real time reporting of data, machine vision systems with immediate feedback, and even overheard surveillance video of plant floors are commonplace in most factories today.
Manufacturing equipment needs to be safeguarded for these reasons:
1. To maintain process control
In the manufacturing industry, each time a particular product is run, the resulting end product should not vary beyond pre-determined parameters. Customers expect that if they order 100 pieces of a product, that the first part is made to the same specs as the 100th part. Variation in the materials used should be minimized to acceptable tolerances, operators must adhere to strict assembly methods and the equipment that is used has to be consistent in its performance: from day to day, shift to shift and operator to operator.
If all aspects of an assembly process aren’t consistent, then the end product varies. Customers quickly see these variations and label the vendor as unreliable and Quality Assurance will reject whole lots of that incoming product. Variability seen in an end product means that the process is out of control. If the manufacturing equipment isn’t safeguarded and numerous people have access to control modes, there is a greater likelihood that accuracy and repeatability will be challenged.
2. It is equally as important to ensure safety of employees
Across the manufacturing industry there are varying types of equipment, some more dangerous than others. In addition to keeping the process controlled, safeguarding manufacturing equipment will also prevent hazardous situations involving machinery. In manufacturing, it is important to recognize every potential hazard and then conduct a hazard analysis of the entire production process.
Any function of equipment that could potentially cause harm or injury must be safeguarded by an Administrator. Most machine vendors selling to manufacturers go to great lengths to provide operators with equipment training. Many do it in person and onsite, then follow the training up with videos and supplements for the life of the equipment.
In summary, any deviation from a set of protocol safeguarding standards can cause many problems. A product quality problem with an important customer and/or an employee accident are very serious events. Job number one must be to solve the problem. But what happens after the problem is solved? The customer relationship is damaged or in the event of a safety issue, an employee is harmed and top management wants to know why this problem happened and what has been done to correct it.
This request often comes in the form of a Corrective Action Report (CAR). The CAR is mandatory in most quality systems, especially ISO-9000 systems. The SmartDispenser® fixes the root cause of the dispensing problem and provides the necessary corrective actions, documented traceability, from the point of dispense, for the CAR report.
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