At present the efforts to reduce injury in the workplace have been focused on production operations. However due to increased automation, the role of maintenance on plant safety is becoming increasingly significant. This study was an attempt to assess the effect of maintenance on plant safety. An audit on the quality of maintenance was conducted at twenty-eight industrial plants in Alabama. The Spearman Rank Correlation Analysis demonstrated an inverse relation between the injury frequency rate (rho = -0.336) and quality of maintenance indicated by the maintenance audit score. This observation supported the hypothesis that better maintenance is associated with lower injury frequency. As there were several limitations to this study, a more extensive examination of the verifiable maintenance variables is needed. An extensive study will also be helpful to validate the audit instrument for assessing maintenance quality, which in turn, will be very useful to industry in evaluating and improving plant maintenance.
The magnitude of work-injuries is still very high. The national safety council (NSC) reported 4,800 fatalities in 1996 (Accident Facts, 1997), and 3.9 million disabling injuries. The work-accident cost in 1996 amounted $121 billion (Accident Facts, 1997). To date, efforts to reduce injury in the workplace have been focused on production operations. However, there has been a major shift of emphasis from production to maintenance due to introduction of automation in production systems, increasing complexity of production machines resulting to very high cost of machine downtime. The current economics of the production system demands better maintenance program and elimination of machine breakdown, to the extent possible.
Maintenance work may significantly increase the likelihood of work injuries. This is because, to gain access for maintenance work, often safety guards and other protective devices have to be removed. In 1989, Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA), promulgated the lockout/tagout standard and expected it to help prevent, approximately 122 deaths, 2840 lost workday injuries and 31,900 no-loss workday injuries a year from accidents, involving maintenance, repair, or servicing of equipment (Federal Register, September 1, 1989). OSHA conducted investigation on 83 maintenance-related fatalities from 1974 and 1980, and observed that 25 percent of the fatalities were due to non-adherence to safety procedures and 60 percent of these cases were caused by failure to properly de-energize equipment prior to maintenance work.
Sorock et al (1994) observed that the number of maintenance mechanics involved in finger amputations, requiring hospitalization, was high in study conducted in New Jersey. Confined space hazard also causes multiple fatal injuries to maintenance workers. The new approach of performing minor maintenance work by production workers increases the possibility of maintenance injuries as the production operators are usually less skilled in maintenance tasks (Takahashi 1990). Operators may also get injured by malfunctioning equipment resulting from inadequate maintenance (Hertz and Emmett, 1986).
