OSHA Accident Investigation · Summary #14298475
MAINTENANCE,WORK RULES,LOCKOUT,CRUSHED
Event description
Employee killed when crushed inside palletizer
Investigation abstract
Employee #1, the line #3 supervisor, was making control changes to the #3 pallet tacts a collar, the carriage stops at that position and allows the next course o f boxes to be stacked onto the pallet. While Employee #1 was inside the palletiz er he activated a microswitch that signaled the carriage to descend. He apparent ly thought that it would stop at one of the collars above him. Instead, the carr iage continued downward past the collars, crushing Employee #1 to death against the stationary conveyor system that expels the pallet. Company policy is to de-e nergize equipment prior to working on it. There are no provisions, however, for securing the machine in the OFF position. Employee #1 had 15 years of experience with this equipment, more than anybody else. izer, a machine that automatically stacks boxes of picked vegetables and wooden pallets. Employee #1 was inside the energized palletizer changing a pallet drop rod, which determines the number of courses of boxes that are stacked onto a pal let. This drop rod is provided with "collars" that can be adjusted to the desire d position up and down the rod. For example, if four courses of boxes were to be stacked onto a pallet, then four collars would be installed and positioned acco rdingly on the drop rod. These collars activate a microswitch that is mounted on a movable steel frame carriage that supports the pallet. Each time a sensor con
Victim
-
#1 Fatality Age 50 M
- Nature of injury
- 21
- Part of body
- 5
- Event type
- 2
- Source
- 26
- Occupation code
- 999
- Human factor
- 18
- Environmental factor
- 4
- Task assigned
- 1
Codes shown verbatim from OSHA's accident-investigation database. A human-readable decoder is coming in a future release once the accident_lookup2 dictionary is loaded.