Ontex is a leading international personal hygiene group who engineers and makes high quality products for Baby Care, Feminine Care and Adult Care. They are the partner of choice for consumers, retailers, and institutional and private healthcare providers around the world.

Ontex implemented efficient Lockout/Tagout-procedures that deliver optimal maintenance safety and speed for a wide range of machinery in Buggenhout, Belgium.

Challenge: Safe and efficient maintenance

Ontex wanted to achieve a high level of safety and efficiency for machine maintenance interventions.

Solution: A scalable and adaptable Lockout/Tagout implementation

Together with a specialised distributor, Brady offered its expert safety procedure writing service, LINK360 safety procedure software and the devices and padlocks to implement Lockout/Tagout in the workplace.

First, experts from the specialised distributor partner and Brady Corporation visited the Ontex site in Buggenhout, Belgium to write efficient, best practice and machine specific lockout procedures. These procedures enable a systematic machine isolation from all its energy sources during maintenance interventions to increase safety and prevent workplace accidents.

About 350 procedures were offered to Ontex stakeholders via the LINK360 software that allows for easy approval, copying, editing, communicating and scaling machine specific safety procedures. Brady customised the LINK360 look & feel to Ontex specifications, introduced colour coding and specific language selections. Procedure steps were also illustrated in the software with pictures taken at Ontex Buggenhout so employees can quickly recognise, find and lock out relevant energy control points per machine.

Based on customer-approved lockout procedures, the distributor and Brady established a comprehensive lock & key-plan to fit specific Ontex requirements. This included carefully laid out key hierarchies with master and grandmaster keys at several management levels for the various types of suggested locks. Ontex electricians for example, were offered a nylon shackle padlock to help protect against electroshocks, while other roles favoured steel shackle padlocks. Every specialist can open and remove their personal locks when their work is done. Team leaders can open any lock assigned to their team, and the site safety manager can open any lock if necessary after following a dedicated procedure.

With distributor partner support, Brady also provided the actual lockout devices and SafeKey padlocks to implement the lockout-procedures in the Ontex workplace. SafeKey padlocks offer the largest amount of key & lock combinations in the market and enable a future-proof Lockout/Tagout approach with largest sets of locks in multiple master-key layers. Every SafeKey lock was customised with a serial number engraving and they were delivered in lock boxes per set of 10.

Results: Safe and efficient Lockout/Tagout

Ontex Buggenhout can now efficiently communicate the use of optimal lockout-tools in step-by-step machine-specific lockout procedures, illustrated with photos taken on-site. Easy compliance with the approved procedures increases maintenance safety, speed and efficiency. Management can easily edit, approve and communicate changes from a central, digital location. Every digitally approved procedure can then be printed and attached to relevant machines, or can be accessed directly by employees via tablet or smartphone.