INDUSTRY NEWS


SATA to Place Manufacturing Facility in South Texas Italian manufacturer SATA Group


will build a new machining plant in Brownsville, Texas. The project on a 350-acre parcel of land is expected to create 300 jobs and bring a $114 million investment from SATA, which manufactures machined parts for Caterpillar, John


Deere and major automakers. By 2020, it’s expected the facil-


ity will house a vertically integrated operation with machining, forging and metalcasting. Plans include an alumi- num diecasting operation, along with a plastic injection molder, distribution center and apprenticeship center.


“Our level of quality and superior


manufacturing productivity created a global demand for our machined prod- ucts and services,” said Pietro Cinotto, vice president, SATA USA. “It grew to the point where it made sense for us to enter the North American market and that’s when Brownsville, Texas, came into our site selection process. Te overwhelming support helped us make the decision to settle in Brownsville.” “It’s needed to make SATA more suc-


cessful,” Jason Hilts, president and CEO, Brownsville Economic Devlopment Council, said according to Te (McAllen) Monitor. “Tat was the whole concept when we started working on it. Tis complex has pieces of many different companies coming together to support a common goal. It’s a very unique op- portunity.” SATA has three plants in Italy,


Exhaust manifolds are one of the many products produced by SATA Group. LETTER TO THE EDITOR


June Brings Even More Thoughts of Safety’s Importance June is National Safety Month.


Employers often focus on trail-


Safety is important every day, but National Safety Month gives us an opportunity for a special focus and re- flection on how we might improve. In our hectic operations we do not always find time to communicate the value of safety. People look to their leaders for clues to what is important. If the focus is always on production or quality or the crisis of the day, important values like safety may get ignored. National Safety Month gives us a


chance to put our priorities in proper balance. It is a time to step back and reflect on what we are doing well and consider where we can do better. It was 100 years ago that the first


safety standard was developed. Te standard dealt with many of the same issues we face today. Now, equipment is designed with


safety features built in and most facili- ties have formal safety programs to ad- dress safety and health hazards.


14 | MODERN CASTING June 2016


ing indicators, like OSHA record- able incident rates, which have two problems. One, trailing indicators put a lot of emphasis on minor injuries and may ignore more serious problems. In 1931, Herbert Heinrich published his book Industrial Accident Prevention, A Scientific Approach where he introduced his pyramid theory that for every major incident, 29 minor incidents and 300 near misses occurred. While a useful theory in many ways,


more recent understanding is that fatalities and minor injuries have two very different pyramid patterns. Injuries associated with routine


operations follow a pattern similar to the one Heinrich proposed, although the exact numbers often vary by industry. On the other hand, injuries associated with non-routine work, such as maintenance and repair operations have a much steeper pattern. Te idea that a reduction in the number of


minor injuries will lead to a reduction in serious ones does not apply as well to high hazard work. Te second problem with trailing


indicators is they only tell us what has happened in the past and do not tell us how to change the future. Lead- ing indicators, such as audit scores or training inventories, can be better pre- dictors of future safety performance. We have made a lot of progress in


Gradient Lens ad I12


safety and health over the past 100 years. But the hazards of heavy ma- chinery, molten metal, confined spaces, hot work and work at heights will be with us for a long time to come. We need to continue to refine our efforts to control those hazards.


Thomas J. Slavin Slavin OSH Group, LLC Chicago


and one in Brazil, Argentina, India and China.


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