Abstract: On March 11, 1998, Employee #1, who worked for the Proud Preserver of Hoffy (Hoffy) was assigned to operate Tiromat packing machine in the Wienie room, after the end of shift of the machine's principal operator. Hoffy is in the business of making wieners, sausages, lunch meats, and bacon. The accident occurred in the Wienie room while using the Tiromat packing machine. The Tiromat packing machine packages and seals 5-lb bricks of wieners. This process involves cutting the sausage tails off, manual stacking 5-lb lots of sausages in buckets, and dumping the buckets in open packages. The packages are then passed through the Tiromat, which seals a top on the package and trims, and cuts the plastic package into individual five pound bricks. A label is then put on the brick, which is boxed up as a finished product. This operation involves five to six workers: sausage tail trimmer, packager, Tiromat packing machine operator, one employee to put labels on the package bricks, and one employee, who manually boxes the finished product. At the time of accident, in addition to the Tiromat packing machine operator, five other coworkers were working in the Wienie room. One coworker was cutting the tails off the Portuguese sausage, another coworker was packing the buckets, another one was labeling, and another coworker was loading the finished product into boxes. Employee #1 started operating Tiromat packing machine at 12:30 p.m. Similarly to what had happened to the principal machine operator, who was working the previous shift, approximately at 12:50 p.m. the plastic film bunched up in the Tiromat packing machine and jammed. Employee #1 removed the guard covering the two sets of knifes and began removing the bunched up plastic film. At that moment, he was warned by the maintenance mechanic to be careful with knifes because they were very sharp. The maintenance mechanic left the room when he saw Employee #1 putting the guard back on. When the maintenance mechanic left, Employee #1 removed the guard again and began clearing some excess film from inside the cutting area. When the foreman entered the room and saw the guard off the machine, he asked Employee #1 what happened. While talking to the foreman, Employee #1 did not focus on what he was doing and the first set of knifes amputated his fingers. Employee #1 was hospitalized and his fingers were reattached.