I had been working at this particular client, a global food processor, for over a year helping them increase throughput and quality while at the same time dramatically reducing costs and cycle times. Things were going well and my client was very happy with his results. Then one day I was sitting in his office and he shared with me his personal Balanced Scorecard against which he was measured by corporate head office. While most of the indicators were tracking very well, he pointed out their Total Incident Rate or TIR number which was one of the worst of any plant in the company. This number is a relative measure of plant safety that compares total number of work-related injuries and illnesses to total hours worked by employees.
"Have you ever done any work in improving health and safety?" he asked me, still frowning at his scorecard.
I didn't even have to think about my response. "No, everything we do has to do with improving processes and implementing effective management systems." Then I added "I'm sure there are lots of safety experts out there who could help you out."
He sat for a while thinking. Then he said "No we need more than some safety lectures to fix this. We need a completely different approach. I want you to take your approach to processes and management systems and apply them to the safety problem we have here. I think it could work."
Now every consultant will tell you that the first answer you always give when a client, especially a happy client, asks you for something is "yes, right away." But I sensed this was completely different. I knew I was out of my element and the last thing I wanted to do was mislead anyone, especially when it came to the safety of employees.
So instead I gave the him the second answer all consultants learn to give in these situations. "Let me talk to my partners and get back to you" I told him. He seemed satisfied with that response so after a while I left his office.
I did in fact discuss it with my partners and at first they were as reluctant as I was and for all the same reasons. In the end after much internal deliberation and cajoling by my client we reluctantly decided to do the project. However we made a point of clarifying for my client that in no way, shape or form were we going to attempt to attach any financial results to the reduction of workplace accidents.
Since this challenge was unlike any we had faced before I ended up being directly involved in the strategy and approach for our project team. We decided to start, as we always did, with the Subject Matter Expert who in this case turned out to be the very frustrated Health & Safety manager for this particular facility. It was he who told us about something called the Bird Triangle of safety. For those of you like me who have never heard of this the idea is that Health & Safety can be modeled (more or less) using the following process:
- Unsafe Situation
- Near miss
- Minor Accident
- Lost Time Accident
- Fatality
The next question was how to use Lean and management operating systems to "improve" this process. In fact what we did was figure out how to use Lean to make the process worse. Or in other words reduce the flow of employees. Using the standard conversion ratios from one step to the next we calculated the number of unsafe conditions the company was "allowed" in order to achieve their target T.I.R.. Doing the math based on the number of employees in each area it worked out to between 1 and 2 unsafe condition per area. For ease of communication and to err on the safe side the target was set at 1.
To start the reverse-improvement of the process we had the Health & Safety manager conduct twice daily walk-throughs in all areas of the plant looking for unsafe conditions. For the first few days the inspections revealed double-digit unsafe conditions. These ranged from minor examples such as hoses left lying in walkways up to and including guards left off machinery and employees not wearing proper safety equipment.
Every morning at the Operations meeting the inspection sheets were presented to each supervisor. And during the day the supervisors would make it part of their routine to address the unsafe conditions and ensure that employees were aware of what was wrong.
After a couple of weeks the number of unsafe conditions started to fall dramatically as people started to get the message and see the Waste. So at that point the newly empowered Health & Safety manager raised the bar. He started reporting situations that had existed for so long that no one even noticed them anymore. Of course the supervisors we not happy about this. But the mandate to stick to the program had come from the top and they all new that their safety numbers were being reviewed by our client on a daily basis along with the quality and productivity results.
This continued for a few weeks during what was historically the worst time of year for this facility in terms of accidents. They were at the height of their seasonal harvest which meant that they had on average three times the usual number of employees to handle the increased volumes. Most of these people were seasonal employees who had little experience within the facility. As such they were most prone to getting hurt.
What happened when the monthly numbers came in astounded even our project team. The previous August the facility had reported a total nine lost time injuries. After just six weeks of "un-leaning" their safety process they hadn't had a single worker leave the property as a result of injury.
Due to the weighted nature of the T.I.R. calculation one month was not enough to get the company into compliance in terms of their goals. But the results for August were enough for head office to send a team of Health and Safety auditors to the plant to ensure that everything was being reported properly. It seems no one could believe the results.
The program continued in that facility and by the end of the fiscal year they received global recognition for their turnaround from worst to one of the best. While definitely not a typical Lean approach to process improvement, this remains for me one of the best examples of what an organization can accomplish when Waste (or safety) is made to stand out like a sore thumb.
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