So one of our customers is in a giant hullaballoo.

[2Far ★]

Night shift. We're done with our work. Mill wants to start up. Our supervisor's lock is the last one on the Lock Out /Tag Out box.

All normal so far. Except he can't find the key.

Client supervisor is yelling that they need to get going, which to the surprise of no one, does not manifest said key.

Our guy calls his boss. Boss says he doesn't have key (middle of the night, boss drinks, make your own conclusion). Boss says: under no circumstances are you to cut the lock off.

Mill co-op / intern brings bolt cutters up to area.

Now cutting off LOTO lock is a REALLY BIG DEAL. Decision has to go up to Mill Manager (it's a REALLY BIG DEAL!)

Our guy cuts off lock. Mill starts back up. Night shift folks are happy.

Engineering manager gets in @ 0700, finds out about cut lock & all hell breaks loose.

Now the EM has a tendency to be a really big prick. Listens to only their side of story (past history), etc. He can make as much or as little about this as he so chooses.

The mitigating factor is that this lock was our supervisor's to take off. There were no other employee locks on the box. No one was (or could have been) put at risk. Our guy cut lock off with their local permission and in the presence of 2 x mill engineers & mill supervisor. They should have prevented it from happening.

[petitepedal ★]

Oh man...I remember putting g my lock on a ball mill..before going inside of it to hose it out..which in itself was tricky move that hose just a bit and you were soaked.  Even with my lock on it at 19 years of age I was skeered it would start up with me in it.

[jsharr ★]

So @2Far did you  The Boss find the key when you he sobered up and had some coffee?

[donkpow]

Isn't there a log with the details of a LOTO?

[maddmaxx ★]

Unfortunately in the service we didn't have lock out locks.  We had lock out red tags to tag a system or valve "do not operate".  Sometimes people would make a mistake.  Those mistakes could be fatal.  We took a very dim view of people who bypassed tags.  One of my friends almost had an arm removed by one such mistake.  Once we extracted him from the problem he went down the ladder to the control room of the submarine and cold cocked the first sailor down there who wouldn't look him in the eye.

At his trial he was exonerated while the victim of the one punch knock out was reduced in rank.  Maybe it would have gone worse for him it he'd hit the wrong person.

[2Far ★]

9 minutes ago, donkpow said:

Isn't there a log with the details of a LOTO?

Yeah, but it doesn't include the location of the key,

The key was subsequently found by our night shift guy.

[Scrapr ★]

2 minutes ago, 2Far said:

Yeah, but it doesn't include the location of the key,

The key was subsequently found by our night shift guy.

it was in the bathroom wasn't it

[donkpow]

Just now, 2Far said:

Yeah, but it doesn't include the location of the key,

The key was subsequently found by our night shift guy.

Thank you. It would indicate what the hazard would be, wouldn't it? Ex: "Switch xx-x to off position. Reason: Open controller at x-xx"

[JerrySTL ★]

1 hour ago, maddmaxx said:

Unfortunately in the service we didn't have lock out locks.  We had lock out red tags to tag a system or valve "do not operate".  Sometimes people would make a mistake.  Those mistakes could be fatal.  We took a very dim view of people who bypassed tags.  One of my friends almost had an arm removed by one such mistake.  Once we extracted him from the problem he went down the ladder to the control room of the submarine and cold cocked the first sailor down there who wouldn't look him in the eye.

At his trial he was exonerated while the victim of the one punch knock out was reduced in rank.  Maybe it would have gone worse for him it he'd hit the wrong person.

We had the red danger tags on aircraft. A dumb ass removed one from a circuit breaker for a hydraulic pump and pushed the breaker in. A poor SOB was changing an actuator in the nose wheel well. Lucky it didn't kill him.  They finally stopped  the idiot who removed the tag from working on aircraft after he did more stupid stuff. 

[BR46]

23 minutes ago, JerrySTL said:

We had the red danger tags on aircraft. A dumb ass removed one from a circuit breaker for a hydraulic pump and pushed the breaker in. A poor SOB was changing an actuator in the nose wheel well. Lucky it didn't kill him.  They finally stopped  the idiot who removed the tag from working on aircraft after he did more stupid stuff. 

Every work place has one of those guys. We had one at the spring factory and he had the nickname junior. 25 years after junior quite people were still talking about the dumb things that Jr did. A common saying in the maintenance shop was DON'T BE A JUNIOR!! 

[Further]

We are allowed to cut our own lock off. Have to report it and get a new lock issued to you, but cutting off your own lock is not that big a deal.

Cutting someone else's lock off is a big deal, but happens occasionally. 

[2Far ★]

3 hours ago, Further said:

We are allowed to cut our own lock off. Have to report it and get a new lock issued to you, but cutting off your own lock is not that big a deal.

Cutting someone else's lock off is a big deal, but happens occasionally. 

Not our facility and they work with a lot of contractors. It’s easier/safer to enforce a no tolerance policy. If they had made the call up the chain of command, they probably would have had an OK pretty quickly. 

[Longjohn ★]

We had a bogus lock out tag out procedure for working in the press when changing dies. You actually could not change dies with the press locked out so it was a constant lock/unlock/lock pita. I had a broken lock that I used so if I was on break and the press was ready to run anyone could remove it and start the press up. If OSHA showed up unexpectedly the press appeared to be locked out. I worked night shift, OSHA worked day shift. Most of our safety equipment was dangerous. We used real heavy jack stands that were supposed to be in the press when we were working in it. Guess what? A fifty pound jack stand won’t even slow down a 2,000 ton press let alone a 4,400 ton press. One guy forgot to remove his safety jack and when he rolled the press over the jack came flying out of the press right between two guys and messed up the exterial wall of the shop.