Forensic Engineers and Consultants

Tag Archive: manufacturing

  1. Everybody Has A Part to Play – What’s Your Role?

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    Across industry and construction sites, there are times when employees of different employers are working side by side, or at least on the same site at the same time.  Some industry examples are when chemical plants have contractors on-site for routine maintenance or during process shutdowns for major overhauls or repairs. OSHA refers to these as multi-employer worksites.  In December of 1999, they revised their citation policy which allows for more than one employer at a worksite to be cited for conditions that violate OSHA standards. (more…)

  2. Spontaneous Combustion…Is it hot in here or is it just me???

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    In the old-timey Fire Triangle, you have heat, fuel, and oxygen.  Get these three together in the right quantities, and you get fire.  What if the fuel provides its own heat?  That’s spontaneous combustion, or spontaneous ignition.  NFPA921 defines this as “initiation of combustion of a material by an internal chemical or biological reaction that has produced sufficient heat to ignite the material.” (more…)

  3. Industrial Equipment Failures and Construction Disputes

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    At Warren, we frequently investigate losses involving industrial machinery.  Many of the losses involve workplace injuries, fires, or explosions; however, we also analyze industrial machinery and processes for other types of problems.  For example, we analyze failures of machinery or industrial processes to perform as expected or disputes that arise from the commercial supply and construction of such systems.  This can encompass a range of issues from failure to achieve required levels of product quality or production quantity, to matters concerning unclear specifications or contracts, (more…)

  4. Heavy Machinery Fires Caused by Hydraulic Hose Failures

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    Heavy machinery fires are often caused by hydraulic hose failures.  Pressurized hydraulic fluid escaping from a failed hose assembly can be atomized into a fine spray that can be ignited by heated engine surfaces such as the engine exhaust or turbocharger.

    Hydraulic hoses near the engine compartment of an excavator that burned.

     

    Hydraulic hoses often fail due to age and wear, requiring regular inspection and replacement of hydraulic hoses to prevent failures. Hoses may also fail if they are misrouted.  Misrouting can lead to the hose being pinched or causing it to chafe against a sharp metal surface. (more…)

  5. WARREN WEBINAR: Property Claims Issues at Manufacturing Facilities

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    LIVE WEBINAR: “Property Claims Issues at Manufacturing Facilities” | Presented by WARREN’s President and Senior Consulting Engineer, Jennifer Morningstar, P.E., CFEI.

    COURSE LEARNING OBJECTIVES
    The learning objectives of this course are to provide the attendees with information on the four major facets of property claims that are commonplace in manufacturing facilities.

    They are:

    1. Subrogation against third parties;
    2. Boiler & machinery vs property claims;
    3. Scope of loss, and
    4. Business interruption

    Each facet will be explored and exemplified by at least one case study.

    (more…)

  6. Heat Exchanger Failures Will Shut Your Process Down

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    Heat exchangers, as the name implies, are used to bring a process stream to a desired temperature.  They can heat or cool either gases or liquids. They are fairly intricate in their construction, therefore not the cheapest piece of equipment to purchase.  For that reason, facilities don’t keep “spare” exchangers lying around, so when they fail catastrophically, the entire manufacturing process goes down with them… and stays down until they are fixed or replaced. Ow!

    (more…)

  7. P&ID’s, If You Please – Piping and Instrumentation Diagrams Explained

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    When investigating an industrial incident, one piece of information I always ask for is the relevant P&ID’s for the process.  P&ID stands for Piping and Instrumentation Diagram and is defined as “A schematic diagram of the relationship between instruments, controllers, piping, and system equipment.” A set of P&ID’s for an entire facility allows you to trace the entire manufacturing process from raw material unloading to finished product loadout, including utilities like steam, water, fuel, and air. That’s great information to have, but isn’t especially useful (more…)

  8. The Role of Interlocking Guards in Injury Prevention

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    In the three-part series on the CE mark, we scratched the surface of some of the requirements an equipment manufacturer must meet in order to earn this designation. Part three of the series dealt with some of the requirements for the design of a guard.  One of the items for consideration with the design of a guard is the frequency that someone will need to access the area protected by the guard.  If access is needed on a routine basis, often defined as more than once per shift, the guard needs to be designed to be movable instead of fixed.  Movable is defined as able to be opened without the use of tools.  Otherwise the frustration and time requirements of obtaining tools and removing a fixed guard will often lead to the guard being discarded. (more…)

  9. The Paths of Chemical Exposure

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    The Safety Hierarchy states that hazards should be mitigated first by engineering controls, secondly by guarding, and lastly by warning/training.  When the first two, engineering controls and guards, fail in a manufacturing setting, a chemical release could occur. A forensic chemical engineer can help determine the root cause of that failure. (more…)

  10. What’s Behind That CE Mark Part Three, Machine Guard Requirements

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    In the first blog in this series, we discussed the story behind the CE mark, the Machinery Directive, and the associated requirements regarding the design, production, and sale of machinery bearing the mark. The second blog discussed a cornerstone of safer machine design, the risk assessment. This installment will discuss another crucial piece of the safety puzzle, machine guard design. (more…)

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