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“I have a simple philosophy – all employees should come into work and leave at the end of the day injury free.”
Bob Rymill, Rockwell Automation

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Safety partnerships produce the best results


With safety issues having an increasing impact on the operations of many manufacturing companies, the selection of a reliable safety partner – one that can help you to address all facets of a safety campaign – is vital towards satisfying even the most basic needs of modern legislation.

In terms of both equipment and expertise, Rockwell Automation can provide this type of partnership. Its global reputation as a provider of total safety solutions for machinery and process automation is based on real success at application level. This, in turn, is founded on the understanding that safety not only requires a full portfolio of systems and components, but also expertise in automation safety and real co-operation between all parties involved in a project.

To address safety needs Rockwell Automation recommended three products from its extensive range.

BMW Group Plant Swindon, UK, has 33 dedicated press lines and sub-assembly facilities covering more than 380,000m2. Around 1,100 employees produce high-quality steel and aluminium pressings, making more than 100 different parts for the MINI alone, including the complete body structure and also high-quality skin parts. With such a large factory area, the company uses multiple line-side workshops for minor machine-shop tasks instead of larger central workshops. These ‘satellite’ facilities allow the production-line engineers to undertake these tasks with out having to travel any great distance – helping them address any issues in a timely and cost-effective manner.

The company recently took the decision to upgrade the safety systems within these cells – to better address recent safety legislation – and put the project out to tender. Rockwell Automation, won the tender and set to work, in partnership with BMW Group Plant Swindon, to develop a safety strategy across all 26 workshops on the site.

According to Bob Rymill of Rockwell Automation: “I have a simple philosophy – all employees should come into work and leave at the end of the day injury free. This may sound like a throwaway comment, but it is in-fact a very serious concept. The good thing is that BMW Group shared this philosophy – employee safety is of obviously of paramount importance to them.

“Eighty percent of the contract was for emergency stop equipment and protective shrouding on lathes mills and woodworking equipment. To address these needs we recommended and specified three products from our extensive range: Torklok DC Injection braking units, telescopic safety trip switches and Safedge equipment, each of which had a different role to play in the safety of each individual cell.”

The Torklok units, used on the mills and drills, use DC injection to bring about rapid spindle stop – typically within one second when fitted to a radial drill, the brake unit is actuated by a Telescopic trip switch fitted alongside the drill chuck.

In operation, these trip switches trigger an emergency stop by detecting any deflection caused along their length by something that has become snagged or entangled in the chuck.

Safedge was added to the lathes to protect operators from entanglement in lead screws, the sensitive profile being attached to the front of the Lathe meant that an operator could activate an “emergency stop” wherever he was stood.

BMW Group Plant Swindon has 33 dedicated press lines and sub-assembly facilities covering more than 380,000m2

“This contract wasn’t just for our equipment it was also for our expertise,” Rymill explains. “We had to tailor our solutions to cater for the odd times when the guarding impinged on the object being worked on. In these situations, as well as fitting a special key-override system, we also helped BMW Group Plant Swindon undertake a risk assessment exercise so it could create a special set of rules for when these types of situations arose. If a guard or shroud is kept open and a key override is used, we provided very obvious notifications that this was indeed the case, such as warning lights and sirens, and it was understood by all involved that additional stricter H&S guidelines were in place – those developed by the risk assessment.”

The new safety equipment, which took four months to install across all 26 workshops, has been in operation since December 2005 and has had much less of an impact on normal working than was initially anticipated. Peter Waluga, safety manager at BMW Group Plant Swindon explains: “Rockwell Automation provided us with excellent technical back up. All of our operators were taken through every one of the machines and the guarding hardware and were told how it works and, just as importantly, why it is configured as it is. The installation engineers were complete professionals and there were no complaints at all from the shop floor while the installation was taking place. A few machines have yet to be completed, due to relocation work, but I have been delighted with the whole project from start to finish.”

This type of application demonstrates the importance of a complete service offering. It is all well and good supplying the right hardware, but if you do not have the expertise and knowledge to both back up and support your customers you are selling them short. Rockwell Automation is committed to providing its customers with a complete offering from initial tender right through to ongoing maintenance contracts. In the world of safety, tighter legislation is demanding better relationships with the companies that can provide enhanced levels of services and Rockwell Automation is at the forefront – helping modern companies address modern issues with modern hardware and up-to-date knowledge and capabilities.