Inspection Detail

Inspection: 302772850 - Blueshift Industrial, Inc.

Inspection Information - Office: Denver Area Office

Investigation Summary

Employee #1, a construction worker, was employed by a construction contractor hired to install catwalks and landing platforms to gain safer access to machinery, an Alvey machine in the Alvey Room, a large, cooled warehouse of a large meat packing facility in Greeley, Colorado. The Alvey machine is a robot used in large scale distribution of packaged products. The four fundamental components of the Alvey machine consist of the following: the computer, the carousel, the Inserter and Extruder car, and the conveyor systems with its adjoining palletizers. As the Alvey machine was used in the Greeley meat packing facility, the boxed or packaged beef was temporarily stored in 22 individual, 30-feet high carousels. As the computer was instructed to fill an order for distribution and shipping, the Inserter and Extruder car's robot arm would seek or home onto the selected carousel slot, retrieve the boxed beef, and then descend to the lowest point at ground level and release the boxed beef onto the conveyor system. At this point, the boxed beef would travel to its distribution point to be loaded onto a truck to be delivered to the customer. The Alvey machine was not de-energized, nor locked out, and Employee #1 wore no fall protection. While Employee #1 was connecting the platform to the catwalk, adjacent to, in, and around the path of travel of the Inserter and Extruder car of the Alvey machine, the car struck the construction worker. Employee #1 fell approximately 10-feet, getting caught in the path of travel of the Inserter and Extruder car and traveling under the car, which crushed Employee #1's head and killed him as the car reached its first resistance, that being the next angle iron joint of the car pathway.

Keywords: ROBOT, PALLETIZED CARGO, CONSTRUCTION, CONVEYOR, FALL, RUN OVER