|
|
 |
Articles - Publication Date 2.8.2002
The Journey To World Class, Part 4
Plant safety should be everyone's top priority. Employee feedback mechanisms are a must.
By Jim Cauhorn
Editor's Note: Jim Cauhorn is manufacturing advancement manager at J W Harris Co. Inc., a privately held manufacturer of brazing and welding supplies located in Mason, Ohio. Cauhorn has four decades of manufacturing experience and has been a contributing member to several IndustryWeek Best Plants winners. He was hired by J W Harris in September 2000 to assist the company in its goal to reach world-class status. This article is the latest in a series of reports by Cauhorn documenting J W Harris' continuous-improvement efforts.
There is a significant story I have yet to tell you about. It is about safety. The topic is an easy one to ignore, and many companies do -- or at best they profess to be concerned about safety yet don't really know what to do. I also have encountered the "accidents happen" syndrome quite a bit. This is the syndrome that assumes nothing can be done to keep people from doing things that can cause accidents. In these cases people simply don't understand that accidents can be prevented, not only by using safer equipment, guarding, et cetera, but also -- and more importantly -- by raising the level of safety awareness within the employee group.
There is sometimes a "male macho" thing that has to be overcome with regard to safety. Some men think that being concerned about safety makes them seem lesser in the eyes of others. Leadership has to turn around this kind of thinking. It is accomplished by example. Management must continually reinforce its commitment to the well-being of our employees. Through word and deed, management can take away the macho thing as an excuse for ignoring safety regulations.
The worst thing a supervisor can do is ignore a safety hazard or a person who is exhibiting unsafe behavior. This tells the people around him that he really doesn't care about safety even though he may give a good safety talk.
World-class companies don't ignore safety; they place it high on the list of priorities. In our company, it is No. 1.
When I joined J W Harris I found an above-average concern for the safety and well-being of the employees by top management and ownership. When accidents occurred, every effort was made to determine root cause and to bring about corrective action to avoid a reoccurrence. It was clear to me that the intentions were noble. However, the incident rate and the lost time rate (two key OSHA-based indicators of plant safety performance) were both running almost twice the national average for our industry.
Even though our new facility was eminently more organized, cleaner and better designed for good safety practices than our old plant, there was a perplexingly high frequency of accidents. The nature of our processes, which use high levels of heat and hydraulic pressure, high speed cutting and spooling of wire, present many opportunities for injury.
There are limitations to how much you can do to make processes "accident-proof" without severely limiting employees' abilities to do their jobs effectively and efficiently. The more effective way to accomplish the desired goal (no accidents/no injuries) is to attune employees to potential hazards and train them to avoid placing themselves in harm's way.
First, there must be an underlying foundation of safety awareness. This awareness has to permeate throughout the entire organization. Safety has to be readily recognized as the No. 1 concern of an organization -- not "first among equals," as I have heard many times in the past, but first, period.
J W Harris' approach to bringing this about was manyfold. It started with my staff meetings. The first item on the agenda for every meeting is safety. Our safety manager, Tom Fleming, is always the first to give his report on the state of our safety performance. We also take the time to discuss severe accidents and close calls that may not have resulted in an injury, but which require preventive measures to avoid that possibility. There is no question<
|
|
|