Case Histories: A to Z

Music to Our Ears

Avery Fisher Hall at New York's Lincoln Center wanted to protect against possible trips and falls of patrons in the balcony areas. Management worried that the building's glass exterior wall which flooded light into the mezzanine area combined with an elegant, dark brown carpet installed throughout the facility, could make it difficult for patrons to quickly dark-adapt from daylight conditions in the outer hall to the more dimly lit concert area. The condition could be particularly hazardous for senior citizens who more frequently attend daytime shows. The answer to the problem was to install Jalite photoluminescent stair nosings. Clarion's professional staff worked around the Center's complicated performance schedule to complete the job in one day, and Avery Fisher management now reports that their trip and fall worries are behind them.

Canny Confidence

For over 10 years now, Clarion has provided Lynchburg, Virginia-based Belvac Production Machinery, Inc. with safety labels for its line of continuous motion rotary machinery used by beverage can makers for high speed trimming and necking, base reforming, bottom rim coating and flanging. "When safety regulations change, Clarion immediately lets us know," says Belvac. "They continue to assist us with design of warning and informational labels that comply with the most current ANSI and ISO standards. Also, when we place an order to replenish stock, they let us know of any safety symbol requirements that may have changed."

Pipe Dreams

Bristol Myers Squibb (BMS), the global pharmaceutical maker, has launched a project to standardize safety markings throughout its entire 100-building headquarters campus in New Brunswick, NJ. Clarion is on the job supplying state-of-the-art safety signage, valve tags and pipe markers for their facilities.

Safety in Food Processing

Conagra Foods is one of North America's leading packaged food companies, with a strong presence in U.S. and international consumer grocery, restaurant and food service establishments. Included in ConAgra's consumer brands are Hunt's, Hebrew National, Chef Boyardee, Gulden's, Reddi-wip, Slim Jim, and many more.

Clarion Safety Systems assisted ConAgra's grain processing/food division safety committee in developing replacement labeling and signage for plant equipment and machinery. The project utilized ANSI Z535.4 formats as a key element in improving safety communication and reducing injuries. Clarion's customization capabilities provided an efficient means to create unique labeling and signage that applied to ConAgra's specific context of use requirements. "The versatility of the Clarion system enabled us to customize the labeling to the exact outcome we wanted for a wide ranging age of equipment," stated ConAgra safety official Anthony Yount.

Dark Landings

Easy enough to manage a nighttime landing on the new rooftop helipad at the Duke University North Carolina medical center. But in an emergency situation, helicopter passengers would be hard pressed to find their way in the dark from the landing pad to the hospital's secondary emergency stairwell. Enter Clarion, which provided Skanska, Duke's general contractor, with Jalite photoluminescent pathway marking paint that now lights the way to the emergency entrance and into Duke's patient care facility.

Natural Attraction

For a significant period of time Clarion has been the preferred supplier of safety labels to Eriez Magnetics, the Erie, Pennsylvania manufacturer of advanced technology for magnetic, vibratory and inspection system applications. Eriez calls on Clarion to keep the company current on safety marking standards and for assistance in formatting more complex label designs that require use of multiple symbols and messages. "Our products are designed to the most rigid safety specifications," says Eriez, "and our partnering with Clarion assures us of code compliant, state-of-the-art warning labels that give us a safety advantage we need in today's global marketplace."

Ocean Crossings

When labels from previous vendors were found lying useless in packing crates after a standard ocean crossing, Gribetz International decided to re-evaluate its labeling strategy. Gribetz is a global manufacturer of quilting machines for the bedding, textile and apparel industries. The company wanted labels that were multi-lingual, that could be multi-purposed for their own and their sister company's product lines, and that would adhere under the worst environmental conditions. Clarion did the job by designing labels that could be used across divisions, label inventory costs were cut dramatically. Anticipating future ISO standards, Clarion developed Gribetz' labels in six languages. As for weather, Clarion produced labels durable enough to adhere in the face of hurricane force winds and steamy summer weather. "Other vendors just printed what we gave them," said Gribetz. "Given Clarion's involvement with the ANSI Z535 committee and ISO, we felt confident revising our entire label line under their guidance."

Pictograms That Speak Volumes

Husqvarna is a Swedish-based global producer of outdoor power products exporting to over 100 countries around the world. Their product line includes outdoor chain saws, brush cutters, hedge trimmers and blowers-all of them requiring safety warnings understandable in many languages. Clarion worked with Husqvarna's safety engineers and Applied Safety and Ergonomics to develop a new warning label program including 60 new product safety symbols for the company's landscaping products. The program included intensive safety system testing and development of multiple symbol versions for cross-cultural comprehension testing. Critical to the project was Clarion's guidance in applying ANSI Z235 and ISO3864 design criteria to develop symbols with very different concepts to convey across 100 borders.

Safer Farmwork

Ontario Canada's Ingersoll Products Company is a premier manufacturer of agricultural disc blade products. One of its newest innovations is a portable system which enables farmers to regrind blades mounted on rotary disk agricultural tillage equipment to factory approved sharpness. Ingersoll called on Clarion's risk engineering division to review and isolate product risks, help design variable options around hazardous elements, develop the content and format for custom designed warning labels and determine warning label placement.

Cutting Edge Praise

Omax Corporation of Kent, Washington is a manufacturer of precision abrasive waterjet systems which it distributes to 37 countries around the world. "Clarion has assisted us in the application of both ISO and "harmonized" ISO/ANSI Z535 safety labels and with the translations of label text into multiple languages," says compliance engineer James Moir. "The technical and compliance information we receive from Clarion is always precise and up-to-date and the turnaround time on label design is nothing short of amazing."

Safe Routing

Family owned C. R. Onsrud is a world leader in advanced industrial woodworking routing machinery that is designed with safety in mind. The North Carolina-based company came to Clarion to develop safety labels that contain custom graphics that would communicate the safety information required on their routing equipment. Clarion worked with Onsrud engineers to understand their machinery and how users interact with it. Our design department then created customized symbols to accurately convey their rotating cutter hazards. Needless to say, all of the finished labels comply with the current ANSI Z535 standards.

Shoring Up

Standard labeling was quite simply not available for a custom shoring product designed by Pro-Shore, LLC, a Richmond, California manufacturer of innovative decking and shoring systems for construction of multi-story buildings. Pro-Shore developed a flexible shoring product employing movable forms for poured concrete typically installed by construction laborers. The company needed to communicate safety regulations and warnings to workers of various skill levels, paying heed to literacy levels and language barriers. Clarion's risk engineering services performed a liability and legal field review of the product, evaluated product manuals, distributor contracts, and website safety information, then designed new code compliant product labels dealing with market requirements and environmental exposures. "There was nothing like it," said Pro-Shore. "Clarion provided us the direction, creativity and peace of mind that we had met the legal and safety requirements."

Working in the Trenches

For over 40 years, Illinois-based TT Technologies has manufactured trenchless equipment for the toughest below ground jobs imaginable-from pipe pulling, ramming and bursting to guided boring and directional drilling. Clarion provides TT Technologies with standards-compliant warnings for their equipment; equipment that is exposed to practically every kind of outdoor environmental condition. The labels must perform in two ways. First they must communicate critical safety information. Second, they must be durable! It's no good having a well designed safety label if it falls off. "Working with Clarion has made our life much easier," says TT's safety director Kevin P. Nagle. "In Clarion we have an excellent resource to aid our in-house hazard analysis team. Initially, I thought it might be difficult to convey our custom label needs to an outside supplier. That's not the case with Clarion. Their design team has proven that they can take our hand sketches and turn them into top quality safety labels that meet our unique requirements."

Flash Code

TVA is the nation's largest public power company, delivering electricity to more than 8.7 million residents in the Tennessee River Valley. Clarion provides TVA with compliance advice and safety products for high priority jobs such as the Hydro Plant Arc Flash Electrical Safety labeling project. To keep workers safe in the areas of facilities that have potential arc flash hazards, Clarion provides the TVA with code compliant labels that contain critical electrical specifications and personnel protective equipment information. Each tailored to meet the need of a specific area, and each designed to comply with current formatting standards, chief among them NFPA 70E and the current U.S. National Electrical Code. To win the work, Clarion had to know the code, deliver expert customer support and provide accurate, on time, volume delivery of custom designed labels. No problem there. It's what we do.

Cell Signs

Verizon Wireless, you may know, is the nation's largest wireless company, and, you may not know, the largest wireless data provider. Learning that Clarion has helped develop US and international ANSI and ISO compliance standards, Verizon engaged Clairon to help the company develop serialized identification signage for all its cellular tower locations throughout its nationwide network and to design and produce the required hazard warning signs and labels for all its network locations. On an ongoing basis, Verizon calls on Clarion to keep company safety warning and identification information current and in compliance. If a sign or warning marker is Clarion compliant, its code compliant.

Working for the DOD

There is a lot to know and understand (and clearances required) to develop safety markings for our armed forces, including U.S. missile defense systems, aerospace intelligence, and defense communications equipment. Clarion does this job, working closely with many of the world's premier defense contractors, among them Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, BAE Systems, Boeing, Rockwell Collins, Northrop Grumman, NASA and General Dynamics - all of which produce products for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD).

Clarion works one-on-one with design engineers at each of these companies to develop safety and identification markings that deliver critical information, conform to current specifications, and meet exacting and precise design criteria. All of these contractors place the highest value on people, integrity, and commitment to excellence. And all of them choose Clarion.

A Truly Great Massage

Sidmar Manufacturing is a Minnesota maker of hydromassage tables approved for massage therapy, medical rehab clinics and for home use in the U.S. and Canada. To market its products internationally Sidmar was required to meet Underwriters Laboratory (UL) and the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) testing standards.

"Not so easily done," said Sidmar's president Joe Holland. "My problems began when both UL and CSA ordered that our tables be properly marked with safety warnings. Neither offered suggestions as to what the labels should look like. An internet search yielded lots of information but no real guidance on graphics, language, color standards, label materials or adhesion requirements. I was at a loss until I found Clarion at www.clarionsafety.com, called the company, and e-mailed them the ideas I had for designs. The same day I received a critique on wording, corrections on layout and suggestions concerning the use of symbols. A day later I had a new set of warning labels, code compliant across borders and translated into French for Canadian use. Believe me, if you need guidance and hands on help with code compliance, you won't go wrong with Clarion!"