7. Product Safety
TOPIC LEAD: VICE PRESIDENT CONTRACTING SYSTEMS DIVISION
Our target for 2027: We want to maintain zero incidents every year related to human health aspects of product safety.
Compressors are a critical equipment in various applications in the process industry and energy provision.
System safety and reliability is one of the most important areas of expertise in our business due to the high pressures, continuous operation, integration in complex industrial processes and the individual hazard potentials of the compressed gases.
Burckhardt Compression endeavors to ensure safe operation of compressor systems in every phase of their life cycle. Our approach encompasses five main areas of risk mitigation:
- International norms and standards
- Simulation, calculation and testing
- Outstanding processes
- Control systems and maintenance
- Documentation and training
High safety standards and procedures are crucial
To ensure safe operation of compressor systems in every phase of their life cycle, we began to establish new skill centers to maintain and continually improve the high quality of our design standards for new product lines across all our plants. In addition, we carried out a comprehensive review of our internal product approval process. This defined approval process is particularly important to both our global quality commitment and product safety. It ensures that we meet the required international standards and norms.
Our 8D report provides us with an industry-wide practical method of checking problems with compressor systems. It uses an eight-stage approach to evaluate a problem and determine lasting solutions. We strengthen the findings from cross-case analysis, which also concern quality and product improvements, in addition to product safety.
We successfully completed an extensive test of our high-pressure compressors for marine applications. The construction of the new test facility in Winterthur for the further development of sealing technologies and solutions for hydrogen filling stations at pressures up to 900 bar is also forging ahead. In addition to technical feasibility, strict compliance with extremely high safety standards and procedures plays a decisive role in the successful operation of this new generation of compressors.
Successful expansion of customer training in online and hybrid formats
We offer a comprehensive training program to support safe and appropriate operation of compressors. The change to online and hybrid formats allowed us to compensate for the cancellation of on-site training courses caused by the pandemic and we are almost back to the pre-pandemic level. The recently developed online training course for the particularly safety-related use of oxygen gases enabled us to double the training capacity for this module.