I wonder if they are doing their savings calculations correctly. You have to save a lot of minutes to pay for the downtime that occurs from an industrial accident. Even without the insurance and legal and other resulting costs.
If it happens... If not happens it's still time saved in a operation, who at the end of the year means X amount of production extra that otherwise would not be done that year.
That is the mentality of all this safety equipment defeating purposes.
For example the operation steps to open a door in a CNC lathe normally with the safety not defeated is:
- Program should be finished;
- Rotate key from run to maintenance mode;
- Press button on the panel to open door (releases pin in the interlock);
- Slide door to open;
- Press pedal to open chunk jaws;
- Take finished part and put new one;
- Press pedal to close chunk jaws;
- Slide door to close;
- Rotate key from maintenance to run mode;
- Press run bottom to start the program.
Now with the safety defeated:
- Slide door to open while program is almost finished;
- Press pedal to open chunk jaws;
- Take finished part and put new one;
- Press pedal to close chunk jaws;
- Slide door to close while at the same time pressing run bottom to start the program.
You saved 5 to 8 sec per part. In a 1 minute program you have a free part each 10 parts you do, multiply that for thousands and you see how much more productive it is.
But you are not wrong in the thought plus insurance companies would deny any compensation to the company and worker if safeties were defeated.
Although safeties would be put in working condition after any accident as machine crashes and before the insurance claim and insurance personnel to arrive at the factory to assessment of the situation.