REVOLUTION GM’S SAFETY
General Motors has been improving its safety record for almost two decades, and
metalcasting operations have been at the center of some of the improvements. PETE BUCZEK, WORK-FIT INC., GLASTONBURY, CONN.
D
uring a monthly meet- ing early in 1994, General Motors board member Paul O’Neill asked for the status of
workplace safety within the company. At the time, GM thought it had a good safety program and compared favorably to its competitors. Together with the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, the company imple- mented programs to control lock out, hazardous materials control, mobile equipment, fork truck operations and rigging processes. GM’s focus was on high risk jobs—many of which are in metalcasting facilities—in order to reduce fatalities and serious injuries. It was O’Neill’s questions, however,
that forced GM to take a better look at its workplace safety performance. Te company expanded its benchmark- ing to other industries and found that
even coal mines had a lower recordable injury rate. At the end of 1993, the total recordable injury rate for GM’s U.S. operations was 29.09%. To address this, a working committee was established to review and provide recommendations to improve safety performance. Te committee was chaired by an assistant general counsel, and members came from manufacturing leadership, supple- mented by internal safety professionals. One GM metalcasting facility, Saginaw Metal Castings Operations, Saginaw, Mich., led the way in maintenance work planning. Te facility’s planning process, developed over several years, became the model for all other GM plants.
Working in Phases
Te newly created working com- mittee met several times with outside experts and benchmark companies, such as Alcoa, Allied Signal and
SAFETY ON A SMALLER SCALE
The safety revolution at GM was a massive, national over- haul. But what can small facilities take away from what the company did? Here is how GM transformed itself in a nutshell. • Empower the Plant Manager—Leadership has to show that it is on board with safety. By making the plant manager more visible in safety efforts (rather than allowing the safety officer to work autonomously), GM was able to show every- one it was serious about improving its record.
• Create a Safety Mission Statement—GM was able to sum up its new philosophy in two short sentences. Be sure you have a concise way of building a safety culture in your plant.
• Form Committees That Represent Everyone—All of the important subsections of your facility (administrative, engineering, maintenance and shop floor) must be rep-
resented in safety planning and decision making.
• Set Goals—GM mandated that each manufacturing unit reduce its recordable injury rate and lost workday case rate by 50% within three years. It achieved that goal and then set rolling goals going forward.
• Benchmark—GM recognized it was less safe than coal mines early in the 1990s. So it made a safe company in another indus- try (DuPont) its model for safety in the future.
• Strategize, Review Success, Review Failure—GM’s four key elements to its Phase II transformation were successful in creating an ongoing culture of safety in which committees developed plans and then changed the way they conducted reviews of how the plans were carried out.
—Shea Gibbs, Senior Editor June 2011 MODERN CASTING | 27
DuPont. GM soon learned the benchmark companies had embraced workplace safety as a core value. Manufacturing leadership was respon- sible for the safety of its workers, and the leaders were held accountable. Te work of the committee would lead to Phase I recommendations, all of which were implemented. First, the GM President’s Council, made up of the highest GM executives, wrote its own workplace safety policy. GM adopted its “Absolutes of Safety,” two brief statements to capture the essence of the new policy: “Safety Is the Over- riding Priority” and “All Incidents Can Be Prevented.” Te policy and the safety absolutes remain in effect today at all GM locations. A Manufacturing Managers Coun-
cil (MMC) was given the responsibility of managing the safety culture change and to improve GM’s safety perfor-
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