Coble, you idiot!” When I ran textile machinery years ago, one of my jobs was to find jammed machines, fix them, and start them running again. One day, I found a machine stopped, looked up and down the machine, found nothing wrong and pushed the “START” button. Suddenly, I heard an awful grinding noise. My supervisor stormed around from behind the machine swearing at me and waving a broken wrench in my face. He was changing gears and wanted to know why I started the machine; obviously, neither one of us had ever heard of lockout/tagout.
During the past 25 years, I’ve looked at hundreds of energy control programs. Common problems pop up everywhere and include both violations of OSHA standard 29 CFR 1910.147 and internal procedures. The 10 most common problems with lockout/tagout processes are: