This week, safety played an important part in my work. In our factory we currently experience the link between ‘number of near misses’ (unsafe situations) and the ‘number of accidents’. The number of handed-in near misses has reduced drastically in 2013 compared to 2012 and unfortunately we now have more reported accidents in the 5 months of 2013 than we had in the entire year 2012. To keep daily focus on safety issues we have multiple tools to our disposal. Each employee does at least one safety audit a year in which he observes colleagues for half an hour and look for unsafe actions or situations.
We also have a safety mini-audit in our Kamishibai system, to check daily whether or not people are wearing the protective equipment like protective-glasses at the shop floor. In the past year I unfortunately accosted multiple people on their behavior, especially in wearing their protective glasses. People don’t like me accosting them on something “that small” and seam not to realize the importance of something this “small” in terms of discipline.
If an employee doesn’t have the discipline to wear his protective glasses when he is required to, or conform to a 6S standard in terms of a fixed location to put certain materials, how can we expect this person to respond to our other standards, like using the more complex standard operating procedures?
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