Colored Tape
Colored tapes are an important feature in most industrial workplaces. In fact, tapes are an important part of any safety program in a factory or workshop. Can you imagine how such places would be without a standard of maintaining safety and order? It would be chaos everywhere, with people and machines moving about randomly without any organized order. For the proper running of facilities, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) have given directions on how to mark non-office workplaces. Specifically, OSHA gives industrial safety directions using different colored tape codes. If used correctly, these colored tapes are very useful in enhancing safety as well as order in the workplace.
Yellow is easily the most common color for marking tapes in industries. Organizations use this color for marking several areas including passageways and aisles. Colored tape is mostly for cautionary purposes. Management will use such tapes for enhancement of the general neatness in the workplace. Though yellow colored tapes are easy to see because they are bright, they are more for precautionary measures when used on the factory or workshop floor.
Red or orange tape is close to the use of yellow colored tape. Management will place such tapes near hazardous areas. It could be near dangers, chemicals, machinery, or hazardous electrical installations and so on. Red and orange are usually classed together although orange is less prohibitive than red, mostly acting as a strict warning to those who pass near hazardous areas. Furthermore, orange is more associated to equipment and machinery safety.
Apart from the cautionary red, orange and yellow, another color you will find in the industrial setting is blue. If you find a blue colored tape put round equipment, don’t use the equipment in any way. Such equipment could malfunction and cause accidents if used in its present state. Blue tapes are usually temporary because the malfunctioned equipment will either be disposed of or repaired in due time.
In an industrial workplace, the use of colored tapes is not always about prohibition and warnings. A case in point is green colored tape whose function is directly opposite to that of red and orange. Green as a very welcoming color shows people in the industry where to get changing rooms, water points, and fire extinguishers and so on. Even with so many accident prevention methods in the workplace, people still need guidance on safety. Green tapes are useful for directing people to protective equipment and other amenities, and at the same time giving direction to first aid kits if accidents and injuries occur in the workplace.
In the workplace, you may also come across areas identified with white colored tape. Since white is a neutral color, there are usually no safety concerns in such areas. So where do you expect to see white tapes? Carts, some machines, jigs and fixtures may all be identified with white colored tapes as well.
Safety for employees and other people frequenting the premises is essential in non-office industrial settings. As a factory or warehouse manager, you are responsible for human and equipment safety at the workplace. Using colored tapes to demarcate areas in the workplace is an easy safety tactic to implement for factories, workshops, warehouses etc.