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July 8, 2014

4. MTI Welding Technologies Ltd, 2013

Cause of accident: button positioning

This company had acquired a welding machine which previously had a robot inside an interlocked cage. The machine no longer had the robot and had been modified to allow manual operation.  This included providing buttons close to a holding fixture which had hydraulic clamps. On 23rd August 2013, the operator pressed the wrong button and the clamp closed on his hand, causing the loss of two fingers.

Now, there were a string of faults relating to ineffective interlocks and other factors, but the arrangement of the buttons poses ergonomic questions:

  • Did critical buttons have tactile feedback, say by having a raised ring around them? This enables you to know that you are pressing a certain button even if you are not looking at it.
  • Were buttons grouped in a high risk way? Buttons that cause actions that pose a risk should be grouped away from buttons that do not.

Most of the data in the public domain or ergonomic contributions to accidents are on ships, aircraft and chemical plant, but the last example shows that the types of equipment with which most of us are involved also require careful consideration of the ergonomics of controls in order to reduce risk.

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peter
peter
10 years ago

Here you go