Mine Shutdowns
PUTTING profits before safety is only a short term gain when compared to the cost (both emotionally and financially) of serious injuries and deaths.
It is well documented that physical fatigue plays a large part in elevating the risk of workplace accidents and incidents.
Fatigued employees often have lessened alertness resulting in slower reactions, decreased motor skills and poor judgement.
This increases the risk to their own safety, and to the safety of workmates.
Not only do the effects of fatigue reduce the safety of those relying on the work, but can be seen in the quality and efficiency of the work being done, which in turn impacts profits.
Nivek Industries designs tooling for the mining and earthmoving maintenance industry specifically to improve fitters’ safety and their quality of life; and efficiency gains are an added bonus.
Having a mechanical aide taking the weight of heavy tools and parts during countless maintenance operations not only reduces the risk of crush injuries, muscle strains and sprains, but can dramatically reduce physical fatigue in fitters.
Of the fitters interviewed on various Hunter Valley mine sites this year, every single one of them listed ‘reduced manual handling’ as one of the main safety benefits of having a tracked elevating device (TED).
When asked, “What would you say to a site that doesn’t use a TED yet?” Mick, a contract fitter in the Hunter Valley responded “What price is safety worth?”
“Working on dozers, without TED, you’re lifting heavy components on everything. When you go home, you’re stuffed from it and then you go back and have to do it all again the next day.
“TED is just so much of an easier way; you can work more efficiently when you’re not sore and exhausted.”
TED was initially designed to take the weight out of belly plates, and being remote-controlled, keep fitters out of the line of fire.
These days, an ever-evolving range of smart attachments allows TED to take the weight and crush hazards out of a huge range of maintenance jobs, including the removal and replacement of cutting edges, ball caps, spindles, steer cylinders, steering idlers, tie rods, Y-links, sound suppression, sumps, and pumps – just about anything up to 800kg that needs to be accessed under dozers, graders, loaders and dump trucks.
The latest game-changing attachment to TED is a tooling manipulator arm, the Lift Assist 40 (LA40), which can take the weight of rattle guns and torque wrenches up to 40kg.
This allows the operator to almost weightlessly manoeuvre the tooling into position to get the job done quickly, safely and easily.
Naturally, with the LA40 arm taking the weight, operator fatigue is reduced substantially.
Jess, a fitter from the first mine to embrace the new technology, has become a huge advocate of the LA40.
“The LA40 takes all the effort out of your body and most of the vibration out of it too, rather than taking all that through your arms and shoulders,” she said.
“Prior to having the LA40 arm on site we found that frequently we’d have to stop or have a rest, whereas with the LA40, you could just keep going.”
When asked, “What difference did you feel using the LA40?” Adam, a trainer replied, “It was a combination of having no vibration and no load on your muscles; the impact on my arms was less and I wasn’t physically exhausted holding the gun”.
“You can put the gun onto the nut or bolt and remove your hand and it’ll stay there.
“A lot of the impact is absorbed by the LA40’s spring design.
“The fatigue management of the LA40 is just awesome.
“Doing cutting edges with TED, the GET attachment and the LA40 together is ideal, as you can do the whole process, removing the cutting edge, cleaning it and reattaching it with next to no manual handling.”
Jess offered her thoughts on long term health and work practices: “It’s about protecting people, and working smarter not harder.”
“The LA40 is good for everyone, regardless of their size or strength,” she said.
“Why make something harder than it has to be? It’s not about battle scars, it’s about getting out of it with no scars.”
This positive feedback from actual fitters using TED, the LA40 arm and a variety of Nivek Industries’ specialised attachments demonstrates that improving worker safety and implementing the right tools to minimise their fatigue, improves productivity on a daily basis.
That translates directly into better quality work completed in less time resulting in reduced equipment downtime, therefore increasing profits.
Worker safety and increased profitability are not mutually exclusive – as long as TED is involved.