Industrial production of food: Risk surveys of three manufacturing systems from an occupational safety perspective

Industrial production of food is a branch of industry suffering from many occupational accidents. This paper aims at identifying risks and safety measures in three production systems within this industrial sector. A qualitative exploratory case study with three embedded sub cases was performed. Methods for safety analysis were utilized for data collection and analysis. Risks were mostly handled by reactive technical solutions such as physical barriers and organization of working methods, separation in time and preventive maintenance. Still, relying on human conduct was customary. It was found that there was a lack of overview of the system which gave rise to safety problems. Furthermore, the focus was on product and not production, meaning that production development is handled on operational level, leading to ad-hoc solutions. Safety of machines and automated systems are still not satisfactory when it comes to tasks outside the planned work such as production disturbance handling and cleaning. Documentation, education and information are not used as much as one could expect to improve safety. The results are compiled in a table showing sources of accident risk, exposure control and control of human conduct.