I'm sharing more Good, Bad, & Ugly sights from my travels around the bulk materials handling industry. I pride myself on taking a lot of pictures when I am out on sites. To others, it might seem like a waste of time or unnecessary. But I can't tell you how many times I pull back up these photos to reference them for the sake of storytelling (some are really good/entertaining) or in conversations with coworkers and customers as reference points of things to do or not to do. 📷
GOOD
I just liked the angle of this cement plant so I snapped the photo. So much going on behind the scenes in this one picture. To me, this snapshot represents the good in material handling...the possibility of Clean, Safe, and Productive operations.
BAD
This is bad! This company wanted to protect workers from falling objects (that part is good). The transfer point above this photo was spilling and dropping material all over the place. The company installed nets to catch the "stuff." It worked, the nets did protect workers from falling objects. However, the net acted like a sieve, allowing the smaller material to get through. The workers were safe from the initial hazard, but now they had a mess and safety hazard (slips, trips, falls, and backbreaking labor) to clean up. Not to mention the time and money now wasted on manual, repetitive labor. A better solution would have been to properly fix the transfer point above with enclosures, adequate 
, and 
. If you prevent spillage from spilling, you don't have to catch it...or clean it up.
UGLY
I couldn't help myself from taking this pic. While it wasn't an immediate safety hazard or threat, I did find it plain ugly. Maybe "interesting" and "anxiety-inducing" are better terms. Imagine the anxiety and stress this would cause the maintenance crew needing to service the conveyor belt and idlers now blocked by conduit. Hey, at least it is all conduit...which is better than other sites I have seen. Sometimes when I see something really bad, I can't take a picture. The host won't allow it. Food for thought - "if you don't want photographic evidence of what you are doing, you are probably doing something wrong...and you know it."
If you liked this blog post, check out my other Good, Bad, Ugly posts:
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