Description
2025 ASEM 620 Capstone Project
Publication Date
4-16-2025
Publisher
University of Alabama at Birmingham
City
Birmingham, AL
Keywords
safety engineering
Disciplines
Engineering
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Lemons, Rick, "Validation of Task-Based Risk Assessment (TaBRA) as an Effective Risk Evaluation Tool for Manufacturing Machinery Systems" (2025). ASEM Capstones. 7.
https://digitalcommons.library.uab.edu/asem/7
Comments
Advancements in machine safety technology and machinery safety performance standards have played an important role in helping machine designers, builders, integrators, modifiers, rebuilders, and end-users identify and mitigate risk over the past 30 years. Furthermore, automation and computer systems used for controlling machinery functions have helped reduce the frequency and, in some cases, replaced human material handling tasks with mechanical material handling aids and robots. However, machinery incidents including serious injuries, fatalities and near-miss events continue to occur globally. Historically, machinery risk assessments conducted by end-users often focused on energy-based machine hazards as opposed to a task-based risk assessment (TaBRA) focused on energy-based hazards and human factors involving people that interface with machines to perform job tasks. Additionally, a holistic approach based on systems-thinking and systems-safety concepts was used only by high-risk industries such as aerospace, chemical manufacturing, mining, nuclear power, and oil & gas exploration up until recent decades. Furthermore, some companies may lack an understanding of risk management concepts and may not have an effective machinery risk assessment process. These conditions can affect an organization’s ability to effectively manage machinery risk. Based on past experiences with cross-functional teams using TaBRA, the author believes this approach to understanding machinery risk from a holistic viewpoint provides a valuable risk management process that is being overlooked by some organizations. Therefore, the primary objective of this project is to examine and validate the effectiveness of this approach by conducting a case study to evaluate machinery risk to provide value-added information to identify and address prevention-through-design (PtD) risk reduction opportunities.