Customer

Entergy Corporation, the second largest nuclear generator in the United States, is an integrated energy company engaged primarily in electric power production and retail distribution operations, owning and operating power plant with approximately 30,000 megawatts of electric generating capacity and 14,500 employees. Entergy delivers electricity to 2.6 million utility customers and has revenues of more than $10 billion.

Challenge

Entergy's nine nuclear power plants operate under OSHA's Lockout/Tagout Standard 29 designed to safeguard employees from unexpected startup of equipment and protection from hazardous energy. As an employer, a durable and standardized lockout and tagging procedure must be in place when machines and equipment are being maintained and serviced.

The existing manual printers provided labels that were often low quality or could not handle the condition of the plant well.

Solution

To ensure Entergy was exceeding regulations, a proactive approach was taken to find alternatives to the existing manual process of marking machines as dangerous or locked out. A team from Entergy began benchmarking alternatives. They landed on technology integrator, Miles Data Technologies, and the Zebra Technologies 105SL printing system. In less than three months, Miles Data was able to work with Zebra and provide a synthetic tag and thermal transfer ribbon formulation that is scratch and water resistant, and can be printed on-demand.

'Miles Data understood the strict OSHA requirements we were under and customized a solution for our nine nuclear sites,' said Jeff Lanum, Senior Project Engineer at Entergy. 'They have always supported my rollout schedules and provided the best solution for the unique process at each location.'

Results

Since implementing the Zebra system, printing tags on demand has not been a problem. Employees were eager to jump on board because the printing solution made their workplace safer and saved them time by printing safety tags and labels on-demand.

'It's been astounding – we've had minimal service calls and the equipment works all the time,' said Lanum. 'I have put money in the budget for new printers the last few years, but the original equipment is still going strong. Some printers are over seven years old.'