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Basically, this is not a safety issue, this is a management issue. If management believes in an initiative, they need to support it. Managers, engineers, and administrators need to wear safety glasses when on the production floor. Personally, I prefer making everyone subject to the same reprimands or penalties as a result of not wearing the appropriate Personal Protective Equipment.

This may sound simple, but I have never seen an initiative succeed without management support. For example, every company I have seen have trouble with 5S excludes management. Employees are not going to take time to clean up their workplace if their boss has a messy office and the supervisor’s desk is full of clutter.

Safety glasses are not a matter of preference… they are a matter of safety. People would be wearing safety glasses while shopping, driving, and watching TV if they were fun, interesting, or fashionable.

-Andy

The only exception to significant figures is when we are multiplying or dividing the number by exact quantities. If a quantity is definite then it’s considered reliable; meaning that you have full confidence in your number. If we know, for example, we have exactly eight CD cases – we do not have to consider this number when determining the amount of significant figures to be used.

For example, I just stacked two identical diskettes on my desk and they measure 0.66cm using a pair of calipers. When divided by 2, the average thickness equals 0.33cm/diskette, not 0.3cm. The reason this result can be used is because we have confidence that there are exactly 2 diskettes. In this case we could use 2.000, 2.0000000, and so on for our calculations, so that the resulting average is based on the number of significant figures on the actual measurement, not on the number of diskettes.

This does not mean that you have confidence that each of the diskettes in this example are exactly 0.33cm, but you do have confidence in the average thickness of those two diskettes.

Situations such as these are some of the reasons why we often recommend our customers put their management, engineering and technical staff through a refresher course in mathematics.

-Andy

Tell them that torque is a measure of rotational force. In other words, the force being applied to rotate something is considered torque. The way torque is calculated is by multiplying the force being applied times the distance it is being applied.

Try to use a few practical uses of torque within your plant. Technicians and mechanics often use torque wrenches to measure the rotational force being applied to a screw when they are being tightened. Additionally, extruders, such as yours, are often concerned with the amount of torque or rotational force being applied to the screw.

-Andy