We’re always interested in what’s happening with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), as changes made by OSHA affect a range of industries and professionals who ensure safety compliance, and often the changes affect our customers too. So when OSHA made equipment identification tags a regulatory requirement this year, we noticed.
OSHA announced that effective June 8, 2011 companies are required to have permanent identification on lifting and rigging equipment including slings, chains synthetic and wirerope. To be honest, I’m surprised it took this long to make this a requirement! Previously, the rules stated the identification didn’t have to be permanently attached (as per OSHA 1910). The complete list of changes, as outlined by OSHA, can be found here. Our friends at Columbus McKinnon blogged about this earlier in the week, outlining some useful facts about the new sling regulations.
At the time this change became effective, OSHA estimated that the changes would result in annualized savings for employers of over $45 million, and will reduce paperwork burden by 1.85 million hours annually. Of course, reducing paperwork burden and saving money go hand-in-hand. We hope that the construction, shipyard and other industries affected will see some of these benefits. We thought it might be useful to quickly outline how companies can meet these new requirements.
How can you remain compliant with this regulation?
Let’s use the rigging industry as an example. Field ID’s very first customer was in the rigging industry, and we have a great userbase amongst the rigging community. We’ve definitely seen our share of identification tags and related issues in rigging.
The new rules specifically state that slings with detached tags/labels must be removed from service until a new tag can be permanently attached. This can be a huge headache and can potentially lead to a lot of downtime. Imagine being in the field, about to make a critical lift, and you have to stop everything because someone notices a tag is missing.
The solution is double-tagging.
We’ve noticed a lot of Field ID users using two tags, an RFID (radio frequency identification) retrofit tag and a traditional identification tag. Why is this the way to go? Firstly, it gives you two methods to identify a sling, and a bit of a backup in case one tag falls off or gets damaged. Another reason to maintain two methods of identification is that it lets you look up the safety audit trail in two ways. For example, if the traditional tag is missing, you can scan an RFID retrofit tag and still access and maintain all safety data relating to that piece of equipment.
It might seem redundant at first, but making sure your equipment assets include two identification tags – one electronic and one traditional – allows you to maintain a failsafe safety audit trail. And it gets you that much closer to constant compliance with OSHA.
If you are wondering what a RFID retrofit tag looks like, here are two examples for Holland 1916, a leading manufacturer of rugged RFID-enabled identification tags.
RFID Retrofit tag - DataCinch
RFID Retrofit tag - DataDrop
What do you think? Have you already implemented a double-tagging policy in your safety management practices?
Tags: equipment identification, Holland, ID tags, OSHA, RFID, rigging, Safety Compliance, safety regulations
