Clean and maintain machinery, equipment, and work areas to ensure proper functioning and safe working conditions.

“Clean and maintain machinery, equipment, and work areas to ensure proper functioning and safe working conditions.” is a core task performed by Machine Feeders and Offbearers. Among the occupation's 13 rated tasks, workers place it 8th by importance (#6 most important). About 94% of workers say it is relevant to their job.

This is a single occupation-specific task statement from O*NET. The figures below describe how central the task is to the job and what independent studies measure about AI and this kind of work — not a prediction that the task will be automated.

Work activities this task rolls up to

O*NET groups concrete tasks into broader work activities shared across many occupations.

• Clean tools, equipment, facilities, or work areas. in Performing General Physical Activities

AI exposure

The OpenAI / Eloundou “GPTs are GPTs” study rates this task E0. No direct exposure — current language models give little or no time savings on this task.

Exposure measures whether a model could meaningfully speed the task up — it is an estimate of overlap with model capabilities, not a measure of whether the work will be done by software. The study's intermediate score (β) for this task is 0.00. Automation potential label: T0.

Other tasks in this occupation

• Inspect materials and products for defects, and to ensure conformance to specifications. · importance 4.4
• Record production and operational data, such as amount of materials processed. · importance 4.4
• Push dual control buttons and move controls to start, stop, or adjust machinery and equipment. · importance 4.3
• Weigh or measure materials or products to ensure conformance to specifications. · importance 4.3
• Identify and mark materials, products, and samples, following instructions. · importance 4.2
• Remove materials and products from machines and equipment, and place them in boxes, trucks or conveyors, using hand tools and moving devices. · importance 4.0
• Load materials and products into machines and equipment, or onto conveyors, using hand tools and moving devices. · importance 4.0
• Transfer materials and products to and from machinery and equipment, using industrial trucks or hand trucks. · importance 4.0
• Shovel or scoop materials into containers, machines, or equipment for processing, storage, or transport. · importance 3.9
• Open and close gates of belt and pneumatic conveyors on machines that are fed directly from preceding machines. · importance 3.9
• Fasten, package, or stack materials and products, using hand tools and fastening equipment. · importance 3.9
• Add chemicals, solutions, or ingredients to machines or equipment as required by the manufacturing process. · importance 3.6

See all tasks on the Machine Feeders and Offbearers page.

Sources for this page

Every figure above traces to a named public dataset and the exact release below — not hand-written opinion. See the full methodology for what each measure does and does not mean.

• O*NET 30.3 U.S. Department of Labor / National Center for O*NET Development
• “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130 OpenAI / academic

Data compiled June 2, 2026. Figures are estimates, not advice.

@misc{singulariki-task-14588,
  title  = {Clean and maintain machinery, equipment, and work areas to ensure proper functioning and safe working conditions.},
  author = {{Singulariki}},
  year   = {2026},
  note   = {O*NET 30.3; “GPTs are GPTs” (Eloundou et al.) arXiv 2303.10130. Accessed June 7, 2026},
  url    = {https://singulariki.com/tasks/task-14588}
}