Printing businesses, electrical-equipment plants and chemical facilities involve different work and can have different citation patterns. Compare their industry classifications before applying a manufacturing-wide ranking.
In the Federal OSHA NAICS 32 profile examined here, lockout/tagout leads the FY2025 citation list. Separate manufacturing profiles show why that broad result should not be applied indiscriminately to every subsector.
Leading standards in the NAICS 32 profile
| Rank | Standard | Short topic label | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1910.147 | Lockout/tagout | 757 |
| 2 | 1910.134 | Respiratory protection | 440 |
| 3 | 1910.1200 | Hazard communication | 410 |
| 4 | 1910.178 | Powered industrial trucks | 363 |
| 5 | 1910.212 | Machine guarding | 322 |
The official NAICS 32 profile covers all establishment sizes and citations issued October 2024–September 2025. It lists 4,933 citations overall. This is manufacturing part two of three, not all manufacturing combined. We reviewed the search-indexed snapshot on September 10, 2026 because direct retrieval was unavailable.
Two narrower profiles, two different patterns
| Profile | Leading displayed standard | Citation count | Next displayed standards |
|---|---|---|---|
| Printing and related support, NAICS 3231 | Hazard communication, 1910.1200 | 31 | Lockout/tagout: 30; industrial trucks: 24 |
| Electrical equipment manufacturing, NAICS 3353 | Overhead and gantry cranes, 1910.179 | 13 | Lockout/tagout: 11; machine guarding: 11 |
Sources: OSHA printing profile and electrical-equipment profile. Both indexed snapshots use Federal OSHA, all establishment sizes and the same FY2025 issuance period. Counts can change with source revisions.
Download the selected profiles.
What the comparison supports
The narrower examples show why a sector-level ranking is a research starting point. The differences are useful for choosing which records to examine, but they do not establish the relative safety of printing businesses and electrical-equipment manufacturers.
The printing profile is nested within NAICS 32. Adding its citations to the broader profile would double-count them. The electrical-equipment example belongs to a different manufacturing branch. These are selected comparisons, not a complete, mutually exclusive national table.
A difference of one citation is too small to support a claim about changing industry behavior. Describe the observed ordering, then look at the underlying records before drawing a broader conclusion.
Keep guarding and energy control separate
Machine guarding and lockout/tagout appear as different standards. Preserve that distinction in a research list instead of reducing both to a generic machinery label. The OSHA machine-guarding standards page provides the relevant standard references; the individual citation supplies the specific provision at issue.
For a consultant, that detail can affect whether the record relates to equipment assessment, procedure review or another service. The record alone does not establish the current condition of the equipment or the employer's purchasing plans.
Organize company records by industry and cited topic
Keep one row per company or inspection, with its industry code, source link and cited topics. Preserve the code used for the original research so a later reviewer can reproduce the selection. Record any uncertainty about the company match separately from uncertainty about the inspection.
An industry statistic cannot establish the conditions at a named business. Review the establishment's own record before drawing company-level conclusions.
See OSHA Finder' product and coverage details or compare construction citation patterns.
Where are the manufacturing injury rates?
The citation profiles above are selected subsectors. The workplace injury-rate comparison includes the separate BLS manufacturing sector, NAICS 31–33. Use that source for a sector-wide recordable-case rate; do not add these nested citation profiles together.