KISS. Keep It Simple, Stupid. Noted by the US Navy in 1960, this is an engineering principle used from mechanical to software applications.

I’ll keep it simple today. Safety procedures and devices that are not simple, that are complicated, are pretty useless in my experience. The person that follows some very elaborate safety scheme or utilizes some complicated safety device, probably is so damn careful that they didn’t need to follow any safety procedures.

Make things as simple as possible.

I’ll give two good examples.

1. At our shop we shout “spinning” as well as looking to make sure nobody is near the machine when we put our autos into motion. On a big machine somebody can be out of sight and this is easy to do and easy to monitor that people ALWAYS do it.

2. MHM safety bars just push in like a gate. I have been in many shops with machines that often have some sort of cord that needs to be disconnected to go inside the machine and then reconnected. Inevitably you see people ducking under the cords, bypassing the safety. If not incredibly easy, folks won’t do it. The gate is easy, people push them in.

I have seen people hit by a machine twice and it is not a pretty sight. Do everything  you can to make your shop safe and what you do make it be the simplest thing possible.