DuraNews

If you thought the sequester cuts sweeping across federal agencies would mean fewer OSHA inspectors, think again.

In fact OSHA’s federal enforcement budget saw a minor increase, although the agency did suffer some serious cuts, according to recent report by Bloomberg. Of the $28.5 million cut from OSHA’s budget, $15 million was instead directed at the federal compliance assistance program, which includes the following resources:

Imagine if printing a custom vinyl label were as easy as turning on the label printer, typing something on its QWERTY keyboard, and pressing a button.

If you’re not already familiar with the safety items pictured in the artwork above, you should be.

Few of us will ever have the chance to knowingly save someone’s life. But using the equipment shown above as part of a lockout/tagout (LO/TO) program is a good way to save someone’s life without knowing it. If you work in an industrial environment, chances are you or someone you know has had a “scared straight” experience. LO/TO is an essential safety procedure that uses surprisingly simple tools to keep workers from harm’s way.

In any business, there are two keys to efficiency: One is the reduction or elimination of waste. Excess raw material, excess inventory, excess expense, and excess time are all forms of waste that cause managers to lose sleep and investors to lose patience. The other key is innovation, which comes from people whose minds are invested in improving a process.

Depending on the resources available to your company, you may not be able to hire your own consultant to transition your company to a 5S, Kaizen, or other Lean-based model. Never fear—YouTube has a wealth of videos with Lean experts of varying qualifications showing you how to make your business thrive. In this selection of videos, we’ve picked some of the best Lean spokespeople and perspectives to get you started. We’ve even included a little humor to show what happens when Lean principles are misused.

For more than 100 years, industrial accidents have made headlines. As of this writing, everyone’s still talking about the tragedy that occurred at the West, Texas fertilizer plant. By the time this article is published, yet another incident may be in the news.

DuraLabel hosted a webinar on floor marking best practices, Wednesday, May 15. I’m Jim Bocci, a product manager here at DuraLabel and I hosted the webinar.

As with past webinars, I learned something new from participant comments and questions even though I was the one presenting. This time, the biggest issue was keeping everyone safe where forklifts and workers have to coexist.