Manufacturing, Workplace Safety Record

Manufacturing carries a hazard profile dominated by machine guarding, lockout/tagout, hazard communication, respiratory protection, and noise exposure. Citation density tends to be higher in labor-intensive subsectors (food processing, metal fabrication, rubber and plastics) than in capital-intensive automated lines.

Manufacturing runs a relatively low citation density at 1.01 violations per inspection, indicating that most inspections in this sector close with a small number of citations. Low density usually reflects either lower inherent hazard exposure or a workforce where employer safety programs are mature and well-documented.

The U.S. Department of Labor's Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) publishes the controlling standards, and the Enforcement Results Data files are the primary public source for citation history.

Serious and willful citations account for 69% of all citations — well above the federal average. A high serious-or-willful share is the clearest signal that citation counts in this sector reflect substantive hazard exposure rather than paperwork or recordkeeping issues.

Final penalties in manufacturing average $18,748 per inspection. Final penalty figures reflect amounts after settlement, not the proposed amounts initially issued in the citation. OSHA regional offices have discretion to settle citations through informal conferences in exchange for verifiable abatement plans.

Industry-level injury benchmarks come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Survey of Occupational Injuries and Illnesses, which publishes annual incidence rates by NAICS code. Reading citation counts alongside BLS injury rates is the cleanest way to interpret whether the citation pattern reflects underlying hazard exposure or elevated enforcement attention.

Workers in manufacturing retain the full set of federal protections under the Occupational Safety and Health Act, including the right to a safe workplace, the right to know about hazards, the right to training in a language they understand, the right to copies of medical records and exposure monitoring results, and the right to refuse imminent-danger work without retaliation. Confidential complaints can be filed at osha.gov/workers/file-complaint or by calling 1-800-321-OSHA. The OSHA Workers' Rights page spells out the full set of protections under Section 11(c) of the OSH Act.

Counts on this page come from OSHA's public Integrated Management Information System (IMIS) enforcement file, refreshed from the Department of Labor's Enforcement Results Data files. Industry classification follows the NAICS code recorded by OSHA at the time of inspection.

The Workplace Safety Score shown on linked company pages applies four weighted factors: violation rate versus industry, share of serious-or-willful citations, repeat-citation ratio, and average penalty per inspection. Each factor is normalized so that companies in inherently risky sectors are compared against their actual peers rather than against low-hazard work. Read the full methodology for the exact formula and edge cases.