Feature Article EHS – Methods of Supporting Your Efforts by Patrick McCrevan, B&L Information Systems T


here has been a large push in recent years for many foundry-based industries to step up their game in the area of EHS. EHS stands for Environment, Health, and Safety.


It's a general term used to refer to laws, rules, regulations, professions, programs, and workplace efforts to protect the health and safety of employees and the public as well as the environment from hazards associated with the workplace. You can also think of it as what makes up the profession of occupational safety and health professionals (plus their good friends in the Environmental department).


Many readers might remember an article I wrote here


where I described the abilities within current ERP systems to assist in your QMS (Quality Management System). The good news is your ERP system will likely be able to assist here if properly configured, instead of planning or continuing to pay for an EHS specific piece of software to manage your efforts.


Available EHS software systems often lead you through


the following steps and areas of responsibility: • Build your personalized EHS plan • Manage compliance tasks


• Improve safety performance by tracking and analyzing incidents


• Track emissions, energy and other ESG data for streamlined reporting and announcements


• Provide an analytical BI tool to assist in making data driven decisions


The systems that do this are quite capable, but you should


also realize your ERP system can likely perform these same tasks. Specifically, an ERP system is generally capable of:


• Tracking OSHA incidents that are reportable by employee


• Individual Employee Training requirements and tracking associated with Health and Safety Briefings and Training


• Monitoring Process Checklists assigned and dated to specific individuals for completion


84 ❘ February 2023 ® Some examples and screenshots are in order here to


illustrate the capabilities of ERP in this area. Specifically, when tracking each employee’s required


training tasks, it can be defined, configured, tracked and reported via the Employee record in your ERP system. See Figure 1.


Staff needs to be made aware and have access to Safety


documents guiding their own personal safety as well as describe environmental hazards known in your facility (shown in Figure 2).


These links can be PDFs, Movies, spreadsheets, checklists,


whatever the situation requires and can be made available throughout the plant.


In summary, EHS software systems are effective and topic


specific making them a reliable purchase. However, with a bit of ingenuity and potentially some assistance from your ERP provider you could potentially save your company some money in the long run and we all like saving money!


• Collecting various critical environmental data points and graphing and trending them


• Document storage of safety and environmental guides and warnings that are accessible via a single click of a mouse across your facility


• Real Time Dashboards detailing salient data driving actions to be taken


• An internal Message Broadcasting system with instantaneous alarm and circumstance warnings


So, as you can see there is a broad range of internal functions inside your ERP that can manage the vast majority, if not all of your associated tasks and requirements to make sure you are in compliance and get a sterling review during your next OSHA visit.


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