Powered equipment and machinery make our jobs easier and help us to be more productive.

The machines that we use can run on a number of different forms of energy.

While this energy helps us to do things we could never do by ourselves, because of its great power, it can also be dangerous.

We need to be careful when we work around it.

For example, energy related injuries often occur when one person is working on equipment and someone else inadvertently turns on the power, putting the equipment back into operation.

To help guard against these situations, OSHA has enacted Lock-Out/Tag-Out regulations.

These regulations apply to most industrial and commercial situations and protect people who are working on set-up, repair or maintenance of equipment from the energy that is used to run these machines.

OSHA estimates that these laws save over 100 lives and prevent over 60,000 injuries each year.

The concept of lock-out/tag-out is fairly simple.

The object is to disable the machine that's being serviced by isolating it from its energy source, its source of power.

To do this, locks, tags and other mechanisms are placed on energy isolation devices, such as switch boxes and valves.

Lock-Out/Tag-Out basically involves using your common sense.

A lock-out step, shuts off or isolates a machine's source of energy.

Tagging the machine tells other people the type of work that is being performed on the machine.

Situations where lock-out/tag-out procedures should be used occur more often than we realize.

They include: repairing circuits, cleaning and oiling machinery, cleaning jammed mechanisms, rebuilding equipment and performing machine set-up.