This week’s interview discusses risk assessments and food safety with John Costello, President of Cherry’s Industrial Equipment. John explains how their industry has changed in the past 5-10 years, and what he expects, moving forward with things such as automation. We discuss what is involved in completing a risk assessment and when they’re necessary. Tune in to learn more about light curtains, stored energy, pinch points, and more. In the United States, it is still up to the purchaser, not the machine builder, to safely guard the equipment. John mentions that there has been a big push in recent years to get EHS managers involved in the purchases from the start.

During COVID, food safety has become a challenging task. John explains what businesses in packaged foods, bakery, meat processing, and frozen food industries are doing to keep food safe right now. He talks about how these companies are considering closed loop systems to keep their facilities as sanitary as possible and ways to increase productivity with fewer employees and increased social distancing. Listen in to hear about the challenges that John foresees his customers facing in the next 5-10 years with automation and robotics, labor shortages, and more. To conclude the interview, we discuss the different ways that Cherry’s Industrial Equipment is adapting to meet their customers' future demands.