Ramco Electric Motors solves "a unique safety challenge" .....

We love positive stories about safety in our industry. Here is a recent story of a company that acknowledge a hazard and through engineering controls mitigated it.

The Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation (BWC) recently awarded $1,500 to Ramco Electric Motors, Inc. of Greenville for placing fourth in its annual Safety Innovation Awards program.

Ramco’s aluminum die-casting automated biscuit return was one of four inventions awarded during BWC’s Safety Congress & Expo, the agency’s annual occupational health and safety conference held at the Greater Columbus Convention Center.

“When faced with a unique safety challenge and no easy answers, Ramco pressed forward and fashioned a one-of-a-kind solution that protects their workers from injury,” BWC Administrator/CEO Sarah Morrison said during a morning ceremony. “I’m pleased to present this award and honor the can-do spirit and safety-first mindset that we hope to replicate in every Ohio workplace.”

Located at 5763 Jaysville-St. Johns Road, Ramco die-casts electric motor cores and rotors for use in industrial, military and aerospace applications. A byproduct of rotor casting is a piece of aluminum, called a biscuit, that workers must drop into a 1,300-degree liquid aluminum bath without creating a splash. In its contest entry, the company said workers faced a high risk of burns and injuries related to repeated bending at the waist.

Ramco’s production team, engineer, and technicians developed a conveyor system that delivers biscuits from the machine to the bath. The system employs a programmable logic controller that precisely times biscuit return with the casting process. The system reduces the risk of injury as workers now need only approach the bath during maintenance or when adding a fresh ingot.

Ramco and three other finalists were selected from dozens of applicants. They showcased their innovations at the Safety Congress Expo Marketplace. A panel of independent judges evaluated and scored the innovations based on a number of criteria, including risk reduction, innovation and cost savings, presentation quality and potential for the innovation to be used by other employers.

Other winners and their inventions include:

* 1st place ($6,000 award): Navistar, Springfield

* 2nd place ($4,000 award): MPW Industrial Services, Hebron

* 3rd place ($3,000 award): Terracon Consultants Inc., Cincinnati

Here is the organization news release.

https://www.bwc.ohio.gov/employer/programs/safety/InnovationAwards.asp

We congratulate the workers and management of Ramco of working together to mitigate the hazard of molten metal burns in their factory. Keep up the good work! We are very proud of you!

We challenge all readers of this post. Do you have a hazard that through engineering controls can be mitigate? If you do, take a lesson from Ramco and work with your employees and management to develop a device, process, machine to minimize a hazard.

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