Food and Drink Industry (FDI) has a strong contribution to EU-28’s economy as reported by Eurosta...t (2014). FDI involves more than 4,25 millions of workers divided in 289000 companies with a relevant degree of diversification. Far away from the common way of thinking the FDI sector has an accident frequency comparable to those of other industrial sectors.
This paper discusses the objectives and early results of the project PROAGE, funded by INAIL unde...r the Saf€ra framework. The aim is to better control of the ageing of equipment, to quantify the impact of operating modes on system reliability, to estimate their residual life and to adapt the maintenance strategy, while respecting safety, regulation and operational performance.
The Human Factors contribution in the scope of the industrial process optimization presented in t...his case study had to deal with considerations regarding the physical and mental workload requirements of different workstations and the capabilities of the operators assigned to them. The scope was to provide the industrial management with a better way to allocate human resources to tasks having different workload requirements.
Nowadays, several pieces of equipment are running over their expected life-time. An equipment rev...amping could solve the situation, but, it is often not possible for economical reasons, regulatory constraints, etc..
The risks identification is a key step for the safe design of a manufacturing process and, in thi...s framework, once the threats to the process have been pointed out, it is important to evaluate their consequences, as well as their causes.
Despite an increase in the process automation, different activities remain mainly operator driven..., as the loading and unloading of tankers, maintenance operations, and so on. In these cases, the activities performed by the operator can be critical, both for the safety and for the product quality. Optimizing the operational procedures is thus a key factor for quality and safety.
Risk assessment in manufacturing work environments gives a relevant contribution to health and sa...fety management for the operators: hazards are identified, and the associated risks are quantified in order to promote the risk mitigation and to improve the safety level for all the workers involved.
Energy saving is an important issue for any industrial sector; in particular, for the process ind...ustry, it can help to minimize both energy costs and environmental impact. Maintenance optimization and operational procedures can offer margins to increase energy efficiency in process plants, even if they are seldom explicitly taken into account in the predictive models guiding the energy saving policies.
Even today, a heavy human and economic toll is still exacted by unsafe and unhealthy working cond...itions. Governments, employers and workers now recognize the positive influence of introducing OH&S management systems at the organization level, on the Hazard Identifcation, Risk reduction on productivity.