With an audience of over 50, the recent inaugural Machinery Safety Alliance ‘blast off’ seminar at Leicester’s National Space Exhibition was hailed as a success.
Founding members Pilz Automation Technology, Festo, Fortress Interlocks, Werma and Troax all made presentations to a diverse audience comprising automotive, paper making and converting, food, packaging, consultative, building materials, material handling and automation sectors. The Health and Safety Laboratory opened and closed proceedings, giving a unique perspective to what has been a well received event.
Founder of the group, David Collier (Pilz), said, “Overall, machine safety is not rocket science – it’s about preventing people getting hurt by machines at work. The complicated part comes when safety functions have to be designed, verified and validated – which we seek to demystify during our seminars – but on the whole our aim is to address the wide range of issues, standards and technologies relevant to machine safety. Safety really can improve productivity as well as protect people, and we hope that our pragmatic approach offers some guidance to achieving both without becoming a sales pitch.”
The group was formed in early 2012 as a non-profit organisation with the stated mission ‘to make sense of safety, to safeguard productivity’ via its website and educational seminars.
Amongst the positive feedback received for the first seminar, perhaps the best praise was that the seminars provided a good balance of information without being a sales pitch. “We aren’t just a ‘product road show’, we’re non-profit and educational – this is the spirit of our organisation,” stated Collier.
You can find out more about the Machinery Safety Alliance seminars by visiting www.machinery-safety-alliance.co.uk. The next events take place on the 27th June at the Concord Conference Centre in Manchester, and on the 5th September at Explore@Bristol.
