Keep your workforce happy: Improve safety and overall work conditions with spray technology

Every effort should be made to keep your employees happy and safe. As the experts in spray technology Spraying Systems can play an important role in improving work conditions in challenging areas with slip hazards or poor air quality, where workers face exposure to dangerous chemicals, and are cleaning in difficult environments.

Unemployment figures in Australia are at historic lows. With such a tight labor market it becomes even more important to retain your most valuable resource: your employees. With these simple strategies, we can help you protect your workers, enhance product quality and improve your bottom line.

Increase worker safety by reducing coating use

Achieving consistent, uniform coating can be challenging in any industry. Applying too much or too little can lead to messy, unsafe work environments, poor air quality, high scrap rates and costly rework. For many manufacturers and processors, these issues are viewed as an unavoidable outcome of the coating process. Often they don’t realize the existence of alternatives which can help protect workers and improve product quality in most coating operations.

The key to consistent coating and improved worker safety is Precision Spray Control (PSC). PSC uses a spray controller to turn electrically-actuated nozzles on and off very quickly to control flow rate. This provides exceptional accuracy and consistency with minimal waste. PSC has been proven to reduce coating use up to 70% and yield savings of hundreds of thousands of dollars annually This added efficiency has a direct connection to worker safety.

One significant threat to worker safety is slip hazards caused by oils, lubricants and other coatings dripping and spilling on the floor during application. PSC eliminates the wasteful overspray that creates slippery equipment and floors. PSC can also dramatically improve air quality by reducing misting. In many operations, electrically actuated hydraulic nozzles can replace air atomising nozzles.

You can learn how to improve worker safety by dramatically reducing the use of chemicals, lubricants and other coatings when you download our white paper.

Keep workers out of hazardous cleaning environment

If your workers are manually cleaning tanks and totes, or using the fill-and-drain method, there is another option which can improve worker safety, minimise labor costs and greatly reduce cleaning time.

Automated cleaning offers an opportunity to keep your workers out of hazardous environments. It can also save significant amounts of energy, millions of litres of water, and substantial amounts of chemicals. In addition, automated cleaning is more consistent and repeatable than manual cleaning. This means you can better plan and budget for the time and resources required in cleaning.

Automating your tank cleaning can also minimise downtime — manufacturers report reductions in cleaning time up to 90%.

Here’s a real world example: A specialty powder manufacturer was able to reduce cleaning labor costs by more than $75,000 annually and significantly reduce cleaning time. Check out this case study to get the full story behind these impressive results.

Minimise contact with hazardous chemicals

Some applications require hazardous chemicals that workers become exposed to on every shift. Eliminating this challenge starts by rethinking the application method. The solution may prove to be surprisingly simple and highly cost effective.

One manufacturer learned this valuable lesson first-hand. Operators at the manufacturer’s facility were regularly exposed to a hazardous parting agent that was required following bronze casting. The operators manually sprayed plaques on a conveyor with the agent using handheld spray guns. The equipment used required constant attention because of clogging issues and frequent refilling. This process resulted in prolonged exposure to the hazardous parting agent and caused ongoing concerns for the manufacturer and operators.

To eliminate these challenges, the manufacturer implemented a system that automatically applies the parting agent to the plaques quickly and efficiently without operator intervention. The system is designed to ensure the application rate is adjusted when operating conditions such as line speeds change.

As a result of this new system, workers were reassigned to other tasks, saving the manufacturer approximately $90,000 on labor annually and eliminating the safety risks.

To learn more and take a closer look at the system, read our case study.

Keep workers safe and healthy during flu season

During fall and winter respiratory viral infections and flu epidemics have been with us for ages. Recently we also had to add COVID-19 to the list of airborne viruses. Unfortunately, even a small outbreak can have a big impact on workers’ health and your organization’s productivity. Therefore, limiting the spread of diseases on the work floor is high on the agenda.

Viruses like the common cold and flu are always around. It’s just changing conditions that make it easier for them to spread. When it gets colder people stay more indoors and in closer proximity to each other. Most importantly though colder air brings down the humidity. It’s this low humidity that makes it easier for viruses to get around as is nicely illustrated by this video made by Aalto University in Finland.

By humidifying the air, it is much harder for small droplets with germs and viruses to spread around the room. Our humidification and disinfection solutions help to maintain the air quality in your facilities and can significantly limit the spread of disease during the flu season. To find out more about our air quality and disinfection solutions please contact your local spray specialist.

Creating an actionable plan

Enhancing your spray applications could be a direct route to improving worker safety. In fact, you might be able to make improvements that also save money and reduce downtime.

To get started, let the industry experts at Spraying Systems Co. consider ways to optimize all your spray operations with a facility evaluation.