Many manufacturers are becoming increasingly concerned with Covid-19 breakouts on the production floor. There are ways to improve worker safety through preventive best practices and proper preparation.
Within the last month, the virus has spread further to at least 70 countries including Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Thailand, Italy, Iran, the United States, Germany, UK, and increasing.
Many manufacturers are becoming increasingly concerned with breakouts in their factories on the production floor as it can become catastrophic to them potentially affecting employee health, third-party exposure, and production output.
China makes up a third of the world’s manufacturing and is the world’s largest exporter. In February, China’s factory activity fell at a record rate as manufacturing operations were closed down to contain the spread of this virus. This created a ripple effect on the rest of the world.
Four safety strategies for the workplace
But how do you keep your facility running with the increasing plant shutdowns, deep cleaning effort, staff quarantines, etc.? Four safety strategies can help.
- Employers should keep themselves and employees updated with the CDC’s recommendations
- Preventive strategies in the workplace
- The OSHA interim guidance and other resources for preventing exposures to, and infection with COVID-19
- In the US, there are numerous measures being adopted that is in line with the CDC guidelines for businesses and employers to plan and respond to the coronavirus
Using EAM/CMMS to track remediation in the workplace
A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) can be used to address some of these requirements and make the plant floor safer:
- Create work requests for line scrub downs or team temperature checks
- Collect track and trace information of employees (attachments to employee record e.g. telephone number, home address, next of kin, travel details, etc.).
- Replacement of hand sanitizers and hand wash stations, etc.
Considerations and planning leaders can undertake
Gartner recently released a special report describing considerations and planning that leaders can undertake as the coronavirus outbreak continues.
COVID-19, regardless of how severe it ends up being, is a reminder that companies need to plan and prepare for large-scale outbreaks of a dangerous disease. It has the potential to be as or more disruptive to an organization’s continuity of operations as a cyber-intrusion or natural disaster.
Source: Eagle CMMS
