Creating a safe workshop environment

Protect your most valuable assets

With today's technological advancements, it's your responsibility to provide a safe workplace for your most valuable assets – your employees. Improving work environment quality is necessary to keep workers happy and motivated as new tech is developed to prevent work-related injuries before they happen. You want to look after your employees' health and well-being for continued success and a low turnover rate. We understand your position as an employer, and we're proud to say that all Voortman machines and systems comply with current European safety guidelines as a standard. 

Maximum safety = maximum output

Whether processing with a Voortman standalone machine or an automated machine line, Voortman implements three main safety principles to ensure production continues to operate at maximum output:

• A clear overview on all zones
• Moving parts are outside physical range
• ISO standards for safely stopping or shutting down machines

It's our goal to ensure our safety principles encourage maximum output. Together, we can design and organize a system to operate as efficiently and safely as possible, providing minimal machine downtime.

Safety in practice

An advantage of a fully-automated MSI processing line with automatic roller conveyors and cross transports is that the only sections requiring manual interaction are the infeed and outfeed sections. These sections are equipped with double light curtains, allowing operators to safely load or unload profiles without any system downtime. 

Each curtain consists of three light beams to monitor the entire area and make sure nothing goes unnoticed. One light curtain is placed a minimum of 1100 mm from the roller conveyors, so operators will never contact moving profiles. The other light curtain is placed 1000 mm in front of the cross transports and is the first curtain that's interrupted when entering the system area. 

Safety fences (2-meter height) surround the rest of the entire Voortman machine line to prevent collision with moving profiles or units.

Safe and efficient

With interconnecting light curtains, it's possible to create multiple zones and isolate the cross transports from the roller conveyors. This allows the operator to safely activate the first light curtain without stopping production at the machines or roller conveyors. The light curtain closest to the roller conveyor is only activated if the first light curtain is activated. Profile transport stops and remains on hold when both light curtains are activated in a  zone. In a multi-zone system, other zones will continue to process and transport materials, reducing downtime to a minimum. 

With a clear view of all zones and strategically placed reset buttons, the zone in question is up and running in no time after safety confirmation by the operator.