How PMs Can Prevent OSHA's Most Frequently Cited Standards

Transcript

Every year, OSHA puts together a list of the most frequently cited standards following worksite inspections.

This webinar will discuss how new smart maintenance tools could help prevent the top five most frequent manufacturing violations, limiting the number of workplace injuries, illnesses, and deaths.

Today, we'll learn how to leverage data and AI technology to level up your maintenance teams.

Welcome to how preventative maintenance can help prevent OSHA's top five most frequently cited standards in manufacturing. I'm David Mantie. And with me today is Jake Westbrook, senior vice president of sales at Limble, which makes software designed by maintenance professionals for maintenance professionals. Thank you very much for joining me today, Jake.

Yeah. Thank you all for having me.

So, June is Safety Awareness Month. So, I can't think of a more appropriate time to talk about how preventative maintenance can help create a safer work environment.

Yeah. Couldn't agree more.

So, let's jump right into it. Could you tell me how preventative maintenance can help with hazard communication?

Yeah. Absolutely. So safety has always been number one priority. Right? I mean, we, at Limble here, we have our maintenance management software, and we've seen the teams that actually use their maintenance management software. They have actually a lower amount of safety incidents happen every single year.

One of the incidents that it comes to mind is, or one of the one of the more recent incidents is a hose rupture incident. And there was a situation where an operator was transferring phosgene from a cylinder to a process vessel. And while he was checking the weight of the cylinder, the hose ruptured, and the operator was sprayed in the face with phosgene, which, could have been potentially prevented. So when we think about how to avoid something like this, even though no tool can compensate for the absence absence of an important procedure, a good CMMS solution helps teams to automate the process of storing and updating hazardous substance documents.

We've seen so many of our customers that really have a standard operating procedure that they fall through follow through every single time to make sure that they don't have some things like this happen.

So we talk a lot about these accidents, particularly with our sites like industrial equipment news, manufacturing dot net. And it seems like a lot of times, the same problems are happening at various manufacturers all the time. Is it because people aren't aware of these tools? They're not adopting these tools. In your opinion, you know, what's causing that disconnect?

I think that it it's it's never an easy thing to set up a system. Right? I mean, a lot of these guys have been doing this for a long time, and so they're used to just fixing things as they break or as they kinda go along. But nobody wants to stop and say, hey. Maybe it's smarter if we actually set up a system to prevent some of these things from occurring. And so I think it's just that initial, reservation.

Maybe that's like, will my guys actually adopt, you know, new technology?

Or will, you know, will we be able to actually get this set up so that that it's actually not slowing our team down, but making them more efficient? So I think those are some of the main concerns that we see. But as people, you know, make that decision to take that big leap in setting up a preventative maintenance program, they find that at least with our solution that it's, you know, intuitive, it's user friendly, and as they start moving with it, they actually can do more with less.

One of the things that people like to ask about adding a new solution like that is how long it takes to kind of implement. How long of a ramp up period are companies looking at when they're looking to bring something like that on board?

It's gonna depend on the scale. For some of our companies that, you know, have their one they have one site with, you know, four or five maintenance people that can be up and running within a couple of weeks. They just get in there. They get their assets uploaded.

They they start putting in their inspections and their SOPs in there, and they can be rocking and rolling within a few weeks. For some of our larger customers and larger enterprises that have, you know, fifty, hundred facilities around the globe, we take a very, intelligent approach to making sure that the software is deployed in the right way, that we follow, you know, procedures and make sure that things are standardized across the board. So some of those rollouts can take, you you know, up to several months, to make sure that they're that that things get deployed and that things are set up the right way.

But that can depend on a company's level of involvement, the amount of resources that they want to put towards a project as well.

Another citation that we hear about all the time is control of hazardous energy or as we all know, lockout tagout. Can you tell me about how a solution like Limble and maybe give some might help maintenance professionals and maybe a couple examples of, how it hasn't worked in the past?

Yeah.

I know that OSHA cited an incident, and it was an excavation incident where an excavator laborer was working at a site using a pneumatic mole to dig out an area for maintenance. During the excavation, he struck an underground eleven thousand volt electric cable and was burned super bad. It's critical that utility lines be checked beforehand even if there's a belief that no danger exists. And so how could, you know, how could this have been avoided? Workers servicing or maintaining machines or equipment may be seriously injured or killed if hazardous energy isn't properly controlled. Clearly mark and outline all underground lines, upload pictures into your work order, and clearly outline steps of what to check before work is done.

I mean, in every SOP where there's this energy that you want to make sure you did that that I mean, the potential and the risk of dying is is very much there. And so you have to make sure that you have a documented procedure within the CMMS that has a lockout tagout. And so within our software, you can put pictures like instructional images saying, this is exactly how you do it. This is what it's supposed to look like. And then you can make sure that you're checking those boxes and you're signing off on each one of those steps, making sure that, like, everything is not missed and that there's a good amount of accountability and ownership. Because if people actually just follow through those procedures, they sign off on them, they're they're uploading photos, making sure that they're taking the required steps, the likelihood of a a situation like this happening is so much more rare.

Do you have an example of the old guard in manufacturing adopting these tools and them being a success? Just because I think of some of the people I know in the industry, and they're just they do it the way they always have been doing it. And it's always worked, so why change it? And, you know, I just wanna say to some of those people out there that, you know, the solution works, that it's efficient. And in the long run, it's safer than just, well, that's how we've always done it.

Well, we're grateful to those those long tenured, you know, maintenance managers that have been doing this for a long time. They have accumulated a tremendous amount of experience and a tremendous amount of wisdom, knowledge, and everything about this, about this this world. Right? And what we're asking them now to do is say, what about all of the newcomers that have never done this before?

And it it all of a sudden, it it no longer can be a tribal knowledge thing. Like, this is something that needs to be documented so that it's passed on to the next generation of workers that don't have that same level of experience.

So we actually take it away that we're really appreciative. And we actually, you know, want to, you know, we're kind of focused on the leave a legacy almost behind, right, where you're now gonna leave something like all of this experience you've accumulated as you've been working on this stuff for twenty, thirty years, you're now going to set up the next generation up with so much more success, because you've learned all these things. And it's going to help like lower the amount of issues too. I mean, I I talked to a lot of people in the space like you, David, that have been in it for a long time. And And one of the biggest challenges that they run into is they're recruiting and hiring people that have never done this before. And they're having to train them and spend hours trying to help them understand and offload a tremendous amount of experience.

And you can't really do that, but one by one. You've gotta really find a system like Limble or CMS to really document this type of stuff and then help train people to get up to speed faster.

No. We talk about that so often passing along that tribal knowledge and what's gonna happen when this generation of workers retires. That's one of the things that I like about the idea of software software made for professionals by professionals. So do you lean on some of that tribal knowledge from industry industry pros to kind of build the program out?

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, they the thing is, our CEO is notorious for a saying where he says, give me a hammer and I'll break things. Like, I he he's not a maintenance person.

We don't know we don't know what we're doing when it goes when it comes to maintenance. Right? Like, they're the professionals at that. But what we know is really good software.

And what now we've as we've worked with these professionals and have like taken all of their feedback into consideration and helped they've helped us so much build the road map of what this software is supposed to do to make their job and their life easier.

That's always been a a really big thing for us here at Lembol.

Well, another hazard that we hear about quite often is machine guarding.

That's the third violation on our list. What can you tell us about that?

Yeah. We had an incident, that there was a, you know, in twenty nineteen a twenty nineteen baler incident where the blade stuck in a baler and needed to be removed, and they did not lock out and tag out the equipment that they were working on. Shift turnover and the next crew took over the work also with that lockout tag out. That baler turned on and resulted in work in the worker losing their hand in the accident. That's a terrible accident.

Once again, this could have been totally avoided by moving the machine. Moving machine parts have the potential to cause severe workplace injuries. Safe guards are essential for protecting workers from these preventable and injures.

At, add a required field you can easily add a required field on your PMs to have a signature of the technician who did the work stating that they have followed the lockout tag up procedure.

I mean, this is just irresponsible, right, where you have people that supposedly did the work, and then you just trust that they did the work, and then you get in there, and then something, like, tragic like this happens.

If you just have a system in place where you actually have each one of those steps, like lockout, tag out, here's the picture of it. Here's my signature, like, taking ownership of it. This whole thing's avoided. Right? Then when I actually go out to do the work, I can see that, you know, three hours ago, Tim logged in tag out this, followed this procedure, and this should be in a good spot regardless of a shift change or regardless of who's working on it now.

Is there a generational difference between workers? You know, is the new generation of workers more accepting of this type of software?

Oh, absolutely. Yeah. What we're seeing is a huge trend of, you know, where there's there's lots of statistics out there where a huge portion of the baby boomers that have been maintenance managers or maintenance leads for a long time now are gonna be retiring over the next five years, and they'll all be replaced with millennials who are very tech focused. And so there is a massive trend all coming in. I mean, we're seeing a huge increase of demand, in our space. We've been in this space now for close to a decade, and, we've seen just massive peaks of of interest and demand and need for something like this.

That's one thing I've seen with, millennials and Gen z is, you know, not just an acceptance, but, like, a demand. You know? Give me the best tools that are available.

Yeah. I mean, they they come into this thing. Right? And they're like, and and it's funny because, you know, I I previous to Limble, I worked in the manufacturing world for a little bit. And when I got to, the company who will remain nameless, I got there. And, everything was paper and Excel, and there was no really digitization or, like, good software for anything.

And it was so incredibly inefficient. I mean, you're having these guys that are coming into these these jobs, and they're asking, well, what? How how do I what's the process for this? How do I do that?

And we're they're using the point of paper or the whiteboard.

And so, yeah, it's definitely something that they're demanding, and is ultimately gonna be better for the company as well, obviously, from an ROI standpoint and standardization and everything else.

Well, two of the other ones that we see in the top five and, you know, maybe not as often, but still make a big impact on the industry are powered industrial trucks and then issues with respiratory protection. Now when did can you tell me a little bit of insight as to how people could prevent those type of incidents? And did the respiratory protection, has that been in the top five for a while, or is that more of a ever since COVID sort of deal?

Yeah. It it has been in there for a long time, actually. If somebody's working on cutting concrete, they'll be using a gas power type machine, which then can emit, like, c o two or carbon monoxide. And you have to have, like, very buttoned up process for getting that carbon monoxide out of the area or to make the the levels, like, in a safe up to a safe threshold.

And time and time again, people don't follow those procedures or because if they don't have those documented, then there's still gonna be tragic accidents where people die or they pass out because they're they're in these types of respiratory. They don't have respiratory protection. And so in Limble, you'll be able to have, you know, specific, like, these are the materials you're supposed to use. Right?

Wear this specific mask.

Make sure you're following and you're checking off that you have this this amount of equipment and the the right things that you need. And then you also have, like, the right industrial fans that are blowing and they're getting the the smell out of there, and they're getting those those toxic fumes out, so that people don't, you know, have tragic accidents. And so that's one thing that we've seen as well as just documenting that stuff.

That's one thing that stood out to me quite a bit is just how often people are harmed when they're doing things like tank cleaning. Yeah.

Just because you never some workers, you know, especially green workers or temp workers don't really know what's in that environment.

Yeah, exactly. I mean, this goes back again to you. They haven't been working in this for fifty years like some of the other, you know, more tenured people. Right? And so you've got people that are new. They may even be temp workers. They're just here for, like, the week or for this their seasonality.

They don't know. And so how are they supposed to be taught? Like, this is why you've got to have this thing standardized and documented so that they know exactly what they're supposed to be doing so that they're out of harm's way.

Is the information fairly accessible? You know, can is it easy for a temp worker to kinda navigate Limble's interface and, understand that they're checking all the right boxes?

Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, it goes back to our roots where we wanted to build something that was intuitive, that was user friendly, but yet still powerful.

Right? And so everything that we do has been focused on those kind of principles of of of building technology. And so, within Limble, there's definitely a way to get them easily set up, and all they gotta do is check boxes, right, in those, procedures.

So we often talk about how maintenance is seen as an afterthought. But then on the other side of that argument, we're always talking about the importance of uptime, the importance of safety. And, I mean, I don't know. What's your opinion? How do we keep working to make sure that maintenance isn't an afterthought and, you know, we bring it to the, to the foreground?

Sure. I'm sure you'll know my opinion on this one. But, we have we have a story of a there were about there we have a customer that has about twenty different manufacturing sites. And the first one that started adopting and using Limble actually needed it the most, which is not surprising.

Right? They were, I think, the least profitable plant out of the twenty. And after a year of using Limble, they went from the least profitable plant to the most profitable out of all twenty. And it captured the attention of the entire c suite of the organization, and they said, what's going on?

What what are they doing different than everybody else? And Limble was the big driver. And so this, you know, maintenance manager, this director of maintenance ended up getting promoted, had tons of visibility. They were then, you know, sharing it with all the different plants and started standardizing across the organization.

But that was a direct impact on the bottom line. Right? I mean, they had way less downtime, unplanned downtime. They increased their uptime, so they were able to produce more And they were in as a result, they were able to drive more revenue and have higher profitability. So it is, I think that that perception of maintenance being a just a cost center is starting to go away as people learn about how they can now if they can prevent things or prevent unplanned breakdowns, that means direct revenue and more profits in their pocket.

This is where it gets really interesting, and I'm sure we're gonna kind of highlight this. But as people move from preventative, they start to be able to maybe even get predictive, right, by leveraging AI and other really, you know, tech like, really advanced technology to say, hey. We noticed there was a trend that's occurring here, and you may wanna check this before there is a breakdown even it even occurs. And so that's something we're really excited about about where the industry is going.

No. It's, it's amazing how many heads will turn and how quickly they'll turn once, profitability comes into the equation.

Yeah. Exactly.

So, you mentioned predictive maintenance. Tell me how now maintenance isn't just getting better with preventative maintenance, but, you know, with tools and new capabilities like AI, how are predictive maintenance and AI potentially going to change or disrupt the maintenance industry?

I think it definitely is going to evolve the industry.

I think that, you know, it's we're still probably a long ways away from all robots doing all kinds of maintenance. Like, I think that we need people to still be in there and, you know, putting make making changes to filters and making adjustments and whatnot. But I think that the more applicable technology right now is that we were doing a let's say, for example, we're doing a PM once a quarter on this. And as we tie in our analytics and start to notice certain trends, we're saying, hey. Actually, you may want to do service this maybe more than just, you know, once every three months. You may wanna service this once every month because it's, you know, you're starting to lose some efficiencies. So all of a sudden, you're starting to get, like, better, more data centric insights, that are that are coming from, you know, AI and a couple of these other, you know, just more, advanced technology.

Is part of the issue that with AI, it's only as good as the information that you kind of put into it. So it's making sure you build the right model that you're using, essentially.

Yeah. Hundred percent. This is why, you know, you've been hearing people talking about industry four point o, IoT, AI as buzzwords for over a decade now. And the reality is is when people come in, they're they they, you know, they may wanna jump immediately to AI, but they've gotta start.

This is a step by step process. Right? I mean, phase one is you're on paper. Let's let's get this digital.

Right? Once this is digital, then we can start to get really preventive. Right? And we can start preventing breakdowns that are occurring.

And then we can start to say, how do we, you know, actually start to tie some analytics in here? How do we start to learn? How do we start to, like, develop an algorithm?

So it is like more of like a stage four thing. And most of the people that we work with are coming they're They're on stage one right now. Right? And they're they're moving up.

But that is it is a step by step process. And you're correct. The, you know, garbage in garbage out. So you got to get to a point where you're getting good data that they keep they can then feed the algorithm and, be useful.

We get those, people that just show up at your door just like, I'd like to buy some AI, please.

Yeah, exactly. They want to immediately jump to that. It's like, well, what does it look like today? Well, it's on paper right now. Okay. Well, let's get it off of the paper, and then we can start talking about AI.

Well, I really do you I really do appreciate you taking the time. But, I mean, before we get out of here, is there anything else, you know, with, safety month in mind or talking about preventative maintenance, anything else that you wanna make sure everybody, listening and viewing this knows either about Limble or the industry?

Yeah. That's a great question.

I would say, you know, a trend that you're seeing around safety in general is the goal being zero casualties because that's the only acceptable goal. Right? And if they're and and what we've seen is that Limble and a CMMS helps lower safety incidents tremendously.

And so if your goal as a company and as an organization is to have zero casualties with casualties, which is the only acceptable goal, then we need to do everything in our power to make sure that you're taking every step to do that. And one of the very first steps is to actually have documented digital standardized procedures that people follow through with every single time.

And so I would just invite, you know, any companies that are listening to this, today that that that if they don't have something like that in place that they absolutely should, feel free to reach out to us, and we can get things spun up and squared away pretty quickly.

They should also invest in a system that is intuitive, that their guys like, that they want to use, that makes their job easier.

And, you know, they'll notice that there's hundreds or thousands of other CMS providers, but they'll wanna pay attention to the ones that are powerful yet still have, you know, that level of into intuitiveness that people, you know, like to use. So I think those are the the kind of final words that I'd love to share with the team here.

Just a random question. With some of your clients, do you see are some of them still using the old school it's been x amount of days without incident?

On, like, the whiteboard?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we we still see that. Right?

And I think that, you know, yeah, we still see that. And, we can do better than that, I think, at this stage.

Very good. Very good. Well, Jake, thank you very much for taking the time today. I really do appreciate the appreciate the insight. And if anything, I hope it helps everybody be a little bit safer, not just in safety month, but going forward.

Hundred percent. Couldn't agree more. Thanks for having me, David.

For Jake Westbrook with Limble, I'm David Mantie. And this has been how preventative maintenance can help prevent OSHA's top five most frequently cited standards in manufacturing.

Thank you very much. We'll see you next time.

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