Safety: The less focused element in QCDPMS

Safety: The less focused element in QCDPMS

Safety is often touted as a company’s first priority, however, activities related to safety is driven by compliance to legislation rather than any safety improvement initiative. 

But what does safety mean to organizations?

Is it the condition or state of being safe; freedom from danger or hazard; exemption from hurt, injury, or loss or all of them. 

Why an organization should focus on safety?

  1. Every life on earth is important
  2. Every life is precious
  3. No matter, who he is and what he is doing, human life has a unique value

What happens when someone loses brother, husband, father, son....its disastrous.

Principles of safety

  1. Every accident is avoidable
  2. Take personal responsibility for your own safety
  3. Every task is important enough to perform it safely
  4. Integrate safe work practices into your daily routine
  5. Make safety a habit
  6. Individual effort is the first step to the team’s safety success
  7. Awareness leads to alertness
  8. Continually seek to improve your safety performance
  9. Safety is a privilege, not a right

Objective of focusing on safety

  • Zero Accidents
  • Zero Breakdowns
  • Zero Diseases
  • Safe Working enhances Quality, productivity and generates value
  • Attitude and Behavior replaces Statistics as a measure of success
  • Conservation of Resources (Power, Water)
  • Environmental preservation

Machine Safety

Design stage: Build an equipment which is fundamentally safe to operate & maintain

In operation: Prevention of human errors, education & instruction

In maintenance: Daily confirmations of safety mechanisms

H.W. Heinrich taught us through his Heinrich Principle that we must pay attention to even the smallest of safety incidents or so-called "near misses" if we want to find the root causes of what could become larger safety accidents. The same principle applies to 5S, the elimination of waste, and awareness of quality problems. Lean management means everyone is vigilant about even the smallest problems. This requires constant education and attention to maintain a heightened sensitivity and avoid habituation to the warusa kagen (condition of badness).

Safety audit guidelines

New or under construction, under installation projects:

  1. When the Project basic plan is finalized.
  2. When the Project Planning is finished.
  3. When detail design is almost finished.
  4. Before the Construction Project starts.
  5. When Project is almost finished.

Equipment undergoing periodic Maintenance:

  1. Safety Audit should be done after completely stopping equipment.
  2. Safety Audit should be done after equipment is being restored for production.

When Equipment in Operation:

  1. _____ years after installation of new equipment.
  2. After every ____ years for equipments which are already installed.

Safety & 8 wastes

“Safety is value-added, and hazards are waste,” says Damon Nix of the Georgia Tech Research Institute, one of the pioneers of the method. Consider the Eight Wastes and their impact on safety hazards: 

Defects – Increased maintenance activities, hazardous material exposure, machine exposure
Overproduction – Overexertion, extra handling, unnecessary machine interaction
Waiting – Setups/Changeovers – hazardous energy exposure
Not Using Employee Ideas – The company misses out on potential safety improvements
Transportation – Extra handling, slip, trip and fall hazards, exposure to fork lift traffic
Inventory – Falling loads, traffic congestion, trip hazards, extra handling
Motion – Overexertion, poor ergonomic design
Extra Processing – Unnecessary machine interaction

Summary

The organization should aim at and focus on reducing work related injuries and illness. Improving the morale and thus productivity should be the ultimate goal. They should also include following four elements:

  1. Management committment and employee involvement  
  2. Workpace audit
  3. Implementing LOTO (Lock Out Tag Out)
  4. Training on SHE

 

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