In the year 2023, we still get the old questioning of the intent of LOTO. It never fails; in our LOTO training, we will get operators repeating the application of LOTO to their jobs, word for word, as I have stated it, and then comes the $60,000 question… Does my boss know about this?
Another reason why management (including front-line supers) needs to be active in ALL the initial training courses, not just the one that officially trains them as Authorized, Affected, or Others. It is weird to say this in 2023 since LOTO has been around since the late 1980s, but it happens far too often.
But there is a way to make LOTO efficient… I call this “Local LOTO.”
By locating all of the energy isolation devices at the point of work, especially for those tasks that are done often, we make LOTO a much more efficient function. When workers have to travel to get to an electrical disconnect (sometimes inside a locked MCC room they do not have access to), we can only imagine what will usually happen!
Spend the $ to install LOCAL DISCONNECTS, Pneumatic Dump Valves for compressed air, etc. AT THE MACHINE/EQUIPMENT. I have seen this reduce LOTO times from 5-10 minutes to less than 1 minute spent applying locks and verifying ZES. For a task done by 20 operators, 6-10 times over a 12-hour shift, we save a lot of time. And MAKING LOTO EASIER. This increases the odds that workers will abide by LOTO, and there will be less “unspoken” pressure applied to bypass this critical life safety task.
To get the $ for making these improvements, get the “per hour” production numbers and show how much time/money is being saved with a SAFETY investment. SAFETY can become part of operations and maintenance if we work to incorporate it as a DAILY ROUTINE – it is part of the job as much as anything else we ask our workers to do. But making these LOTO functions more efficient will go a long way to making it part of their daily routine and will answer that $60,000 question… Does my boss know about this?