Matt Brenner, Vice President of Sales for Rockford Systems, LLC, has more than 15 years of experience in machine safeguarding engineering, beginning his career as Midwest Regional Manager and Machine Safeguarding Specialist.
Scarcities in assembly components the last few years have led to more on-the-job manufacturing injuries. In part, this has been a consequence of plant managers reengineering long-established processes to adapt to a new "normal” of uncertainty and delays.
Within the next decade approximately 2.7 million “Baby Boomers” (b. 1946-1964) will retire, ensuring tens of thousands of skilled, well-paid positions will become available, all without a ready supply of American workers to fill them. Statistics paint an especially gloomy picture for the manufacturing sector, and a widening of the skills gap as young employees replace old.
We’ve all heard the phrase “what a difference a day makes,” yet when it comes to industrial safeguarding, the concern isn’t days, hours or even minutes. It is the milliseconds it takes for a machine operation to stop after a stop signal is given.
In the United States, workers operating or maintaining industrial machinery suffer more than 18,000 amputations, crushed fingers and other traumatic injuries each year. While these injuries vary greatly, the majority of cases do have one thing in common: the injury was largely preventable if machine safeguarding equipment had been in-place, or would have been far less severe.
