Rockwell names 2017 manufacturing safety award winners

Nov. 27, 2017 – Rockwell Automation has named automotive manufacturer Honda of Canada Manufacturing and U.K.-based equipment builder A.M.P Rose as the winners of its fifth annual Manufacturing Safety Excellence Awards.

“The awards honour organizations that are leading the way in workplace safety by implementing a strong safety culture, well-executed compliance procedures, and effective use of contemporary safeguarding and automation technology,” said Mark Eitzman, safety market development manager, Rockwell Automation.

Honda of Canada Mfg. received a company division-level award for the “outstanding” safety program at the company’s operations in Alliston, Ont. The automotive manufacturer has ingrained safety companywide, and the Canadian division has worked to continually make safety a core business value. As part of this, the plant worked to improve safety through changes to its culture, compliance processes and technology, and has created an Equipment Safety Committee, which includes representatives from every department.

“This committee meets once a month to review and define equipment safety policies and procedures, discuss equipment-related safety incidents, determine countermeasures and track them to completion,” said Dave Smith, equipment and construction safety specialist, Honda of Canada Mfg. “This group has been crucial to embedding safety into everything we do.”

Starting in the machine design phase, the plant conducts risk assessments to help integrate safety from the start. The entire safety lifecycle – from design to development, integration and change management – is managed through its project management system. This process and the resulting safety improvements have led to significant design and lifecycle cost savings, MTTR/MTBF reduction and productivity gains.

“Safety has always been an area of emphasis for us,” said Smith. “After creating our Equipment Safety Committee and implementing new safety processes at every stage of the machine lifecycle, we realized that we could improve productivity while also improving safety.”

A.M.P Rose, a U.K.-based equipment builder, received an enterprise-level award for its companywide focus on safety. The company, which specializes in flexible packaging and flow-wrap machinery for many industries such as confectionary, snack and bakery, takes a proactive approach to adding contemporary safety solutions onto its machines.

“We’ve found that more clients are asking for safer machines to better protect their employees,” said Lee Clayton, safety assessment analyst, A.M.P Rose. “We’ve always focused on making safe machines, but with this industry shift, we’ve been finding new ways to make machines more user-friendly to help prevent workers from bypassing safeguards.”

Further supporting the industry-wide shift, a recent survey by LNS Research found that 20 percent of end users are willing to pay a premium for increased safety performance.

To that end, the company has moved away from fixed guarding solutions and now uses more flexible safety solutions, such as light curtains and laser scanners. This has helped its customers improve both safety and productivity, and has become a competitive advantage for A.M.P Rose.