Last week, I described Lean Manufacturing and how the approach tends to short shrift safety. Today, I'd like to wrap up the series by laying out a four-step process that company safety officials can use to integrate elements of safety into Lean Manufacturing initiatives.

Step 1: Get Involved(!)

Too often, safety officials regard Lean initiatives as being limited to production matters. Some may be inclined or even advised to stay out of the continuous improvement process. Don't stand on the sidelines. As a company safety official, you need to recognize that you do have a role to play in Lean Manufacturing. Familiarize yourself with your company's Lean methodologies and learn the lingo of Lean. If you can speak the language and explain the value of safety involvement in productivity terms, senior management will listen.

Step 2: Link Unsafe Practices with Waste

Fight fire with fire. Remember that Lean Manufacturing philosophies are about reducing or eliminating different forms of waste. Few things are more wasteful than workplace injury and illness. Eliminating waste and preserving safety are thus perfectly compatible goals. Assess your operations and identify the safety issues that need attention in each of these areas:

• Inventory or Work In Process (WIP):Excess material between operations due to large lot production or processes with long cycle times impedes movement, increases the risk of trip hazards, distractions, blind spots for pedestrians and fork lifts and manual handling injuries.
• Overproduction: Excess production indicates that workers may be working faster than necessary, which can increase the risk of a repetitive strain injury. A well-paced line reduces this risk and decreases the likelihood of Inventory or WIP.
• Motion: Unnecessary motions such as reaching over the head for a tool instead of having it within normal reaching distance are wasteful and hazardous.
• Transportation: Excessive product movement increases exposure to materials handling and injuries.
• Defects: Defect prevention requires less work and involves fewer injury exposures than defect discovery and repair. High levels of defects may also signal poor housekeeping and/ or lighting. These environmental factors may create other safety issues such as eye strain and worker distractions.
• Extra Processing: Processing waste through inefficient work flow and extra processing steps. Examples include avoidable reaching, twisting and material handling tasks which increase overexertion risk.
• Waiting:Poorly designed material flow systems can cause delays and waste time, and adversely affect employee motivation. This can increase the risk of falls and overexertion as workers rush to catch-up with materials. Tasks need to be designed that do not underload or overload employees physically or mentally.

Step 3: Incorporate Ergonomic Analysis into Lean Processes

Integrated ergonomic analyses and design principles with Lean Manufacturing initiatives will correlate to productivity and profit enhancement, while diminishing injury and waste. Great. So, how do you sell it?

• Conduct a loss source analysis to identify where the accidents are happening.
• Communicate the problem areas to management and relate the problem to production and efficiency, rather than Health and Safety requirements (OHSA & OSHA).
• Describe the problem by utilizing attention-seizing visuals.
• Analyze the production process from an ergonomics perspective and identify root causes for the injuries.
• Apply ergonomic design principals to reduce or eliminate the sources of injury.

Step 4: Ask Questions

If all else fails, asking questions may be the best way for safety officials to get management's attention. Incorporate Lean concepts and terminology into your questions rather than focusing squarely on the safety issue. Here are some basic questions to help your safety recommendations get the attention they deserve:

• Are there mechanical issues that compromise safety and create bottlenecks in the production line?
• Are there machine-guarding initiatives that can be addressed as part of a Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) process?
• Is there repetitive bending/ reaching causing the process to become less efficient?
• Is excessive material or poor housekeeping creating the risk of slip/ fall injuries?

Conclusion

As I discussed last week, one of the approaches to Lean Manufacturing is the 5-S approach (Each "S" stands for a Japanese term loosely translated as Sort, Set-in-order, Shine, Standardize and Sustain). Manufacturing without safety can show gains for an organization. However, by integrating safety into the continuous improvement process, a firm can expand on this success to develop the 5 S's, plus one: The sixth "S" is for safety. Marrying Lean and Safe, in other words, will result in quality improvements, productivity gains, better safety awareness and a safer workplace.

NATURAL DISASTERS

Is Your Business Prepared?

By Glenn Demby

Hurricanes Katrina and Rita were supposed to be a wake-up call for businesses about the importance of preparing for disasters. It looks like a lot of companies didn't get the message. According to a recent AT&T Inc. survey, more than 28 percent of U.S. companies still don't consider disaster planning a priority and have no plans in place to handle disasters. Other findings from the survey of over 1,000 senior IT executives at major companies:

• More than half said they don't take specific protective actions even when the government issues warnings of impending disasters;

• Companies with more than 500 employees are more likely to make disaster planning a priority than companies with fewer than 500 (76% vs. 68%);

• A surprisingly high percentage of the 28% of companies that don't consider disaster planning a priority--22%--reported that they had been affected by a recent disaster;

• Eight out of 10 companies that have a business continuity plan have updated it in the past 12 months; 48% have updated it in the past six months;

• 81% of the companies with business continuity plans incorporate cyber security as part of their plan; and

• 40% of the companies with business continuity plans have failed to test those plans in the past 12 months.

Source: AT&T Inc., www.sbc.com/gen/press-room?pid=7922&DCMP=att_biz_continuity_study

BRAIN BUSTER

BRAIN BUSTER

The Crossroads

By Glenn Demby

A good safety director shouldn't hesitate to stop and ask directions. Here's a little puzzle to see how finely honed your directions-asking skills are:

Situation: You're driving in the desert. You come to a fork in the road. One road leads to Town A, where everybody tells the truth. The other road leads to Town B, where everybody lies (no, it's not Washington, DC).

There's a stranger standing at the fork in the road. You know he comes from either Town A or Town B, but you don't know which one. You want to get to Town A but you're only allowed to ask him one question.

Question: What one question can you ask the stranger to find out how to get to Town A?

Send your responses to glennd@bongarde.com. We'll give you the answer and print the names of all the members who submit a correct answer in next Wednesday's Safety Economics Weekly newsletter. Deadline: Friday: 2 PM, Eastern.

Got a brain buster of your own? Send it to me or catherinej@bongarde.com and we'll run it in SafetyXChange. We won't list your name unless you specifically tell us to.

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