Speed Vs. Safety: Where is the Redline?

Situations arise where there is pressure or motivation to reduce safety so that speed may increase. For example, a production line goes down and the production supervisor tells you not to “waste time” with lockout/tagout since (he knows) nobody is going to “be flipping any breakers.”

If you’re feeling lucky today, you might want to cut that particular corner. But would the amount of time saved justify the risk?

• If the loss is merely financial, for example an order will ship late, no. Production output never comes before safety, at least not in any ethical company—and for sure not where you have the choice to refuse unsafe working conditions. Remember, you always have that choice.
• Suppose another worker is trapped in a machine and cannot breathe or her leg is being crushed. Do you take five minutes for lockout/tagout? No, you proceed to do what you must to free that person. Maintenance and production personnel could post a physical presence at the switchgear and other isolation points for that whole area and prevent anyone from operating anything while this rescue is in motion.

What if there is a fire? An environmental spill? These situations also may call for judicious cheating on the normal safety practices, due to an even greater risk to life if delay is incurred.

The hierarchy to follow is this:

1. People. The safety of people comes before environmental or production considerations.
2. Environment. If you must choose between protecting the environment or continuing production, you protect the environment.
3. Production. Of course, the factory was built to produce. But not at undue risk to people or the environment.

Handling production pressure

Where we often see pressure is in production-related downtime situations, even though these never qualify for putting people at increased risk.

What gets missed in the excitement is that working methodically improves not just safety but also the efficiency and effectiveness of the work. A production manager who does not understand this might want to hover over the repair tech(s), frequently harping about going faster. That person needs to be removed from that location, but a repair tech seldom has the authority to do that.

The time-tested solution to that problem is to simply stop working, set down all tools, and inform the hovering manager you would like to resume the work but that’s entirely up to them. Trying to work while being harassed by such a person is only asking for mistakes in safety or work quality.

Alternatives

Knowing that you may need an alternative to the normal safety procedures in an emergency, have you planned accordingly? And do your plans recognize that only the first two items in the hierarchy might qualify for alternative measures? Do those plans also recognize that unsafe behavior can further complicate the situation? Determine precisely what alternative steps would be taken in a given emergency, rather than have an “anything goes” policy.

If you do have alternative measures for emergencies, are people trained in those specific measures? Are specific people assigned specific responsibilities? And does everyone know these measures are both higher cost and higher risk than the normal safety measures—and not to be used except in extreme cases?