What is a group lockout?

Why use a Lockbox?
Performing maintenance on a machine is often done in a group, department or team. To ensure that every employee is safe during the maintenance, a group lockout and a lockbox can be used.

A lockbox is an ideal tool when conducting a multi-person lockout. With a group lockout, the principle is that an authorised employee isolates and locks all power sources with a set of equal-closing safety padlocks.

The key to this set of keyed alike safety padlocks then goes into the group lockout box, also known as a lockbox. Next, each employee working on the respective installation places his or her personal safety padlock on the lid of the lockbox.

The lock box cannot be opened until every personal safety padlock has been removed. After opening the lockbox, the key to the keyed alike safety padlocks can be taken out of the lockbox to then unlock the safety padlocks and switch the energy back sources.

Group lockout in the LOTO procedure
The use of a group lockout is an efficient and proven method for carrying out a complex Lockout-Tagout. Especially in works involving many different disciplines and contractors, group lockout offers savings in the number of safety padlocks required and gives a better overview.

Make sure the LOTO procedure clearly states when a group lockout should be applied, for example:
- "Group lockout is applied only when the number of energy sources to be locked is greater than x."
- "Group lockout is only applied when the number of employees involved including contractors is greater than x."

How does a lockbox work?
1. Lock the machine and/or energy sources with safety padlocks.
2. Place the keys of the safety padlocks in the lockbox.
3. Then have each LOTO employee attach his/her personal safety padlock to the lockbox in order to lock the lockbox.
4. The installation can only be unlocked after all LOTO employees have removed their personal padlocks from the lockbox.

Lockout-Tagout-shop has lockboxes from ABUS, Brady and Master Lock in its product range.
Lockboxes are available in different colours, sizes and materials:

Safety Redbox group lockout box B835 from Abus 
Group lock box 065699 from Brady 
Group lockout box 498A from Master Lock