The eternal battle is production versus safety, and at the very center of this is lockout, or better – avoiding lockout. The complaint, by both production and maintenance is that locking out equipment takes too long, or if they lockout, getting the machine back on line could be difficult.

The Control of Hazardous Energy (Lockout/Tagout), 29 CFR 1910.147, standard was promulgated on September 1, 1989, at Federal Register, Volume 54, No. 169, and was effective January 2, 1990, as announced at Federal Register, Volume 54, No. 213, November 6, 1989.

For decades the safety products market as known was a rather sleepy commodity market (a hard hat is a hard hat is a hard hat, etc.) with few technological breaththroughs. That was then, this is now. The expo floor this week at Safety 2013 showcased more tech innovations than I have seen in coming to ASSE national meetings for 30 years.