SHAPING STRATEGY Safer Than an Aircraft Carrier? MARK MEHLING, MANAGEMENT ADVISOR H
ow safe is this plant environ- ment? Te average employee is younger than 24, 100%
turnover occurs every three years, and operations are round-the-clock. Ten add 75 machines, each
weighing 18 tons, catapulted into the air—from zero to 200 mph in two seconds—several times a day. Tese rolling fire breathers kill anyone who doesn’t pay attention every second. Meanwhile, these 18-ton packages arrive at the back door at 175 mph and must be stopped in 1.7 seconds using a high-tech rubber band system on a little six-acre plot. Add people, handling equipment, hazardous liquids and bombs moving around the floor while this is happening. And it’s done safely. Day after day. Welcome to an aircraft carrier.
Safety Culture Transferred Military pilots, seeing the benefits
of that safety culture, transferred their experience to another industry. Com- mercial aviation. You get the benefit. How safe is flying today? Statistically, you could fly on an airliner every day for 123,000 years and not get hurt, all from a safety methodology completely different from OSHA’s. Both aircraft carriers and now air- lines use a proactive system with two key features.
First Element Te first is an opportunity to “‘fess
up” using a completely confidential report. Tis offers immunity from discipline in exchange for complete honesty. Why? Because negative trends will be spotted that otherwise never would be known. Discover- ing and correcting small problems prevent big ones.
Barriers Have Holes Industrial safety should look like
the above diagram. Each of the round disks represents a barrier of defense to stop a mishap, represented by the arrows. Tese barriers include OSHA, quarterly training, personal safety
Each disc represents a program or other mis- hap barrier. None are perfect, thus the holes. When each barrier fails, an accident occurs.
equipment, etc. Because no program is perfect, each defense has holes, some bigger, some smaller. An incident, possibly fatal, occurs
when one of the holes in each layer lines up together.
Fill in the Holes A confidential, non-retribution
program encourages employee partici- pation to fill these holes. Employees are more inclined to report broken safety systems, or their own mistakes, when there are no repercussions. Self-reporting helps the entire
team. People learn from others’ mis- takes. “I screwed up” reports let em- ployees learn without the background of a fatality or major accident.
Second Element When an incident does occur, the
second element kicks in. Te investiga- tion focuses on what happened and why, not on who. People don’t wake up in the morning and say “I think I’ll screw up today!” Every mishap is a chain of events. Human factors. Break any link in that chain and the incident, or death, doesn’t happen. Discovering and eliminating the what and why, not the who, are key to reducing accidents and incidents. Programs like OSHA’s only deal
with rules, laws and regulations, mostly “mechanical” factors. However, the weak link in any safety effort is people. And the human element is critical. Consider this actual industry inci-
dent: A foundry worker didn’t properly hook his ladle hoist. Te result? 800 lbs. of molten metal spilled on the
Or go to
http://bit.ly/1vMQqQd November 2014 MODERN CASTING | 65
ground. Tankfully, no one was hurt. Leadership recognized the advantages of analyzing the reasons the incident occurred rather than merely punishing the individual with unpaid time off. Since it could happen to anyone, disci- plining one person would accomplish little. Learning why it happened, so it could be prevented, took a real change of attitude. But they learned a whole lot more and gained process insight they never would have had. Had the confidential self-reporting
program been in place on this site, it might have identified trends in advance, such as not having a check- list, ignoring standardized proce- dures, feeling pressure to rush or even someone admitting they almost forgot before but caught it. Interven- tion before an incident beats a safety investigation afterward. Can this program pay for itself?
Yes, in lower incident rates and lost workdays, as a minimum. If it saved an OSHA fine, how much would that be worth? Plus, you avoid inspections, achieve better results, and the cost is minimal. Don’t have a big staff? Te administration of the program can be contracted out to an expert. With a voluntary, confidential
reporting system in place, trends, weaknesses and training opportunities all become visible. At the 118th Met- alcasting Congress in 2014, a panel of five CEOs told the effect of a fatal injury in their metalcasting facility. Now you can do more than just hope you are never in their shoes.
To hear additional insight from the author, scan the QR code with any smart device. Tis one-page introduction cannot fully explain the program. For space reasons, many details have been left out. For more information, contact the author at Mark@
TeFoundryMarketer.com.
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