INDUSTRY NEWS Letterbox
Fixing Ergonomics Is One Thing; Selling the Benefits Is Another The ideas presented in “7 Ergo-
nomics Problem Solvers” (January, p. 33) are good, but the hard money savings information was missing. How many people were injured doing the jobs? How many near misses oc- curred? How many complaints were made? As a safety manager, I know we have to appeal to the bottom line in these “soft” cases involving ergo- nomics, and when the actual money saved is missing or incomplete, it makes our job harder. It is tough to run a business on subjective information. The state- ment in the article regarding job improvement directly translating into
reducing the chance of injury by the same percentage is wishful thinking. It can’t possibly be justified in real dollars. I also think the cost recovery time is a hopeful guess. The only way to justify many of
these changes is to be able to tie them directly to workers’ compensa- tion dollars. Simply saying that they will “reduce fatigue” will not, in my estimation, get you the funds you need to make these changes. This was our argument in Washington years ago when we lobbied congress to stop the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s (OSHA) Er- gonomic Program. Our stance was
that it was impossible to tie changes to improvements, and that we would be chasing OSHA’s elusive ghost of “reduced injuries” on paper forever, throwing money away while never being able to prove our changes made a difference. OSHA was and is unable to tell
when enough is enough when it comes to ergonomic improvements. Articles like this do not help our cause. (Note: These views are my own and do not reflect the views or opinions of Sawbrook Steel LLC.)
DAVE MCGOWAN SAFETY MANAGER
SAWBROOK STEEL, LLC, CINCINNATI
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MODERN CASTING / February 2010
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