Safety worth 244 million euros

Work-related accidents have marked a significant downturn in the recent years. The topic however, remains central, not only for general welfare policies but also in defining company’s growth strategy - a manufacturing system can be defined efficient and safe only if operators’ health and safety are non-negotiable values in the same. Moreover, the company’s productive cycle eliminates main risk factors and prevents the creation of dangerous situations.

According to the Italian Ministry of Economic Development Report issued February 28, 2017, a total of 5,145 995 Italian companies have applied for funding for acquisition of capital goods such as plants, machinery, industrial buildings and the like, for a total investment of over 5 billion euros to be protected.

“Nowadays, the most common product has to undergo rigid norms of construction. When it comes to industrial safety devices however, in particular impact safety systems - systems that are to protect machines, walls and pallet racks from moving vehicles - no specific regulation is foreseen” - Marco Chiarini, general manager of Stommpy is amazed by the current gap-evident situation. The Legislative Decree 81/2009 sets an incomplete normative framework: “There are numerous risk factors present within a workplace, especially risks related to collision incidents. It is easy to imagine that this legislative gap creates conditions for a client to be attracted by a non- appropriate solution. The client remains unaware of the fact that not only benefit will not be gained, but situation will only get worse - problems and costs will inevitably increase”.

Stommpy - a technological leader in manufacturing and sale of impact safety systems for industrial use - has managed to transform the safety bumpers, once undervalued and considered mere cost for the entrepreneur, in indispensable safety devices - systems for the purpose of protecting people as well as expensive company’s investments.

That prevention is better than cure is widely known. To this end, Inail (Italian national institute for insurance against accidents at work) is continuing with its mission to support the companies with the Open Call for Proposals for safety and security improving projects in the workplace. With an open-call activity that started in 2010, this year Inail is granting a total of non-repayable 244,507,756 euros for companies that decide to invest in capital goods.

From April 19h to June 5, 2017, business that will apply to this Call can receive a contribution as high as 65% of the total investment project, up to an overall ceiling of 130,000 euros. The success encountered last year with almost 23 000 applications sent during a single Click Day (May 26h, 2016) confirms the sensibility the Italian industry has with regard to this important safety topic.

To be more specific, the perception of risk factors is different in every industrial sector. In manufacturing for instance, the risk of accidents resulting from an improper turn is greater than every other industrial segment. Therefore, it is important to underline that more than half of the impacts provoked by a moving vehicle with an operator on-board occurs when moving backwards. In these situations, when an impact occurs at a speed higher than the media tolerated, it causes considerable consequences for the operator including spinal cord trauma.

Stommpy is the only reality on the market to take into consideration, besides the obvious energetic classes and safety device’s operating space, the biomechanical indexes that are obtained during the crash test performed. In fact, according to the risk evaluation procedure following the UNI ISO 31000 standard, the level of severity used to certify a certain impact safety system affects the level of incident severity for the operator on-board.

This performance of Stommpy impact safety systems is possible due to the concept of elasticity and planned deformation. In fact, the structure and geometry of the Stommpy systems has been explicitly designed to increase the impact resistance level up to its highest. These systems are made of the innovative and highly-performant technical polymer Tecklene, conformant to all work safety and hygienic standards in food production plants. Moreover, the entire range is equipped with an intelligent and resistant anchorage system named Fixa Block System. The overall effect this combination provides guarantees a considerable dissipation of the energy accumulated during the impact, at the same time reducing the impact’s counter-effect and increasing the total efficiency level when compared to other traditional solutions.

Marco Chiarini, general manager of Stommpy, comments further: “We firmly believe that initiative such as this one, can be a good starting point for the realisation of a common norm”, adding: “for us, being direct active participants in the creation of clear and measurable evaluation performance criteria, the biggest challenge is putting forward a clear legislation for the sector on an institutional level. It is only with this kind of regulation will the market be equipped with proper instruments for selection and application of impact safety systems”.