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Safety Improvement Programme In Royal Mail Engineering Update An ongoing issue with iLSM tray holder clips failing and which the CWU's Health, Safety & Environment Department have been dealing with in conjunction with Royal Mail Engineering (RME), has now come to the stage of being addressed. This has been a long-standing issue the Mail Centres with iLSMs regarding the failure of tray holder retaining clips on sorter modules of iLSMs– notably those on the upper tier. These control the movement of tray holders that sit under each selection on the sorter module and if a particular clip fails on the upper sorting tier, trays can slide out, uncontrolled and strike operators who happen to be in the way. Working with the manufactures 'Solystic' 4 alternative solutions were presented for consideration and after some debate, it was jointly decided that the best solution is a latch mechanism attached to the underside of the upper tier tray holders that holds the holder in place and can only be released by activating a thumb catch as the tray holder is pulled out. This design has itself underwent a number of revisions and the final version was thoroughly tested by 'Solystic' in France before being passed to Royal Mail. This 'Solystic' tests were to prove the design longevity with the aim being a mechanism that had at least a 5 years’ lifecycle – up to 50,000 activations. Solystic have provided a number of productionised latches and the plan is to fit these to iLSMs as soon as possible to remove the risk of further injury and damage. Royal Mail are now replacing a single clip that governs the movement of the upper tray holder with a latch mechanism that cannot slide until a catch is disengaged by an operator. This represents a change to operability on the upper level but eliminates the risk of injury when tray holders slide out and it also dramatically reduces the risk of machine damage if they tilt prematurely. Both the Roll Out Programme and the latch design, plus the communications programme to those in Royal Mail who are affected, are covered in detail in LTB992/11 issued to all Royal Mail CWU Branches by the Union's National Health, Safety & Environment department. In his letter to branches, Dave Joyce
National Health, Safety & Environment Officer concludes: LTB992/11 can be downloaded in full here Source: CWU |
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This has resulted in both injury to operators when tray holders slide out unexpectedly. They can also drop/tilt prematurely onto the lower sorting tier mechanisms causing machine damage to the parts underneath. We’ve had numerous incidents involving both of these examples. Several versions of replacement clips were tested and trialled until finally coming to the conclusion that it was not possible to guarantee that the intrinsic clip design can prevent either of these problems.