RobotRisk Autonomous Systems Incident & Risk Register
RobotRisk / FANUC / 2015-07-07

Maintenance technician crushed to death by robot at Ventra Ionia auto-parts plant

S5 · 07/07
2015 · 14:20 · FANUC · Ionia, MI, USA

Record

CompanyFANUC
Categorymachinery oem
Typefatality
Date07/07
2015
Time of day14:20
LocationIonia, MI, USA · Ventra Ionia Main plant
SeverityS5 (fatality or catastrophic loss)
Scale1 fatality
Confidencehigh
VerificationYes - adversarially checked against the cited source
SourceManufacturing.net

What happened

Wanda Holbrook, a maintenance technician at Ventra Ionia Main in Michigan, was crushed between a hitch-assembly fixture and a robot that unexpectedly moved into her work section; the wrongful-death suit named FANUC America (along with Nachi Robotic Systems and Lincoln Electric) as builders of the robots in the cell, and OSHA fined the plant operator for a serious safety violation.

FANUC record context

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012015 S5: 11152021 S1: 11212026 S1: 1126
S1S2S3S4S5

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FANUC vs machinery oem alternatives

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machinery oem: entries by year

232015 S5: 22152017 S2: 11172021 S1: 22212024 S1: 11242026 S1: 3326
S1S2S3S4S5

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Comparable fatality events in machinery oem

SevDateCompanyEvent
S52015-07-07Nachi-FujikoshiWanda Holbrook killed by robot at Ventra Ionia Mainstamping plant
S51981-07-04Kawasaki RoboticsKenji Urada killed by Kawasaki-built robot at Akashi plant (landmark robot fatality)

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