ISO 45001 for manufacturing companies

Many supplier questionnaires from larger customers contain a section on occupational health and safety. A certificate answers it in one line. Without one, you write out your procedures, attach policies and wait for follow-up questions from the purchasing department.

Tenders work the same way. Buyers score bidders on documented evidence, and a certificate with a number is easier to score than a description. In manufacturing the question carries weight because the risks are physical. A customer who depends on your parts does not want a line stopped by an accident or a key operator out for months.

Customer audits also walk through the shop floor. A management system shows the auditor that hazard assessment, instruction and incident follow-up are routines in your plant and not the memory of one person.

• ISO for small and medium businesses

The standard does not list machines or substances. It requires you to identify the hazards of your own processes, assess them and decide on measures. The table shows how that looks in typical production areas.

ISO 45001 follows the common structure of clauses 4 to 10. Leadership under clause 5 puts responsibility on senior management, not on the safety officer alone. The six requirements below carry most of the weight in a production company.

1. 01

   Identify and assess hazards

   Walk through each hall with the shift supervisors and record the hazards per workstation. Update the record when you buy a machine or change a process.

2. 02

   Set an OH&S policy

   A one-page policy signed by the managing director, posted in the workshop and the canteen, with a clear commitment to prevention.

3. 03

   Consult and involve workers

   Operators take part in the assessment of their own machine. A report form at the line or a monthly safety round gives them a way to raise hazards.

4. 04

   Apply the hierarchy of controls

   Fit a guard instead of hanging a warning sign. Install extraction instead of handing out masks.

5. 05

   Plan emergency preparedness

   An evacuation plan per hall, first aiders on every shift, a practised fire drill and a spill procedure for chemicals.

6. 06

   Investigate incidents

   Record near misses like accidents. Find the cause, assign an action with an owner and a date, and check later that it worked.

The questions use the vocabulary of the standard. These examples show what each term means on a production floor.

Hazard

A source that can cause injury or ill health, such as an unguarded press or a stack of pallets beside a walkway.

Hierarchy of controls

The order of measures from most to least effective: eliminate, substitute, engineering controls, administrative controls, protective equipment. Replacing a solvent-based cleaner with a water-based one comes before specifying gloves.

Near miss

An event that could have caused harm but did not, for example a load slipping from a forklift fork while nobody stood nearby.

Worker participation

Involving the people who do the work in decisions about safety, for example machine operators who help assess their own station.

Energy isolation

Switching off and securing electrical, pneumatic or hydraulic energy before maintenance, so that a machine cannot start while someone works inside it.

Emergency preparedness

A planned response to fire, injury or chemical spill, including who does what and how often it is practised.

You complete an online self-assessment with 34 yes/no questions. Of these, 14 are mandatory requirements of the standard and all must be answered yes. Among the other 20, at least 14 must be yes. The questions cover what is described above: hazard assessment, policy, consultation, emergency plans and incident follow-up.

Once you have passed and paid, SICE reviews your assessment. G6 Agency AG issues the certificate under licence from SICE, and it reaches you within 4 hours. The PDF carries a certificate number and a QR code. Your customer's purchasing department can check both on the public verification page. A short online re-audit each year confirms the certificate.

The price is CHF 699 (€699) in the first year, then CHF 469 (€469) per year including the yearly online re-audit. The certificate is valid for 3 years. Billing is an automatic yearly subscription. You can cancel at any time in your customer account, effective at the end of the current year, and the certificate then ends with the paid year. If you certify a second standard such as ISO 9001, you get 20% off, and 30% from three standards, also on the yearly fee. Prices include 8.1% Swiss VAT for customers in Switzerland and Liechtenstein. You do not need an account to buy.

• ISO 45001 standard page
• Pricing
• Start the free self-assessment

Keep your hazard assessments, your OH&S policy, the last incident records and your emergency plan at hand. Answer yes only where the practice exists in your plant. If a mandatory question gets a no, close the gap first and run the assessment again.

Some customers may specify an on-site audit by a certification body. Check the tender wording or ask the customer before you decide. The guide on certification routes sets out the differences.

• Compare the certification routes
• Certification without an on-site audit