I have mentioned the former plant managers that I was so privileged to have had to opportunity to work for these pioneers in safety. These were Chemical Engineers, but they were safety geniuses before their time. In 1996, I went to work for Dale Fannin, and I had no idea what I was in for. In two years, he taught me more about Safety Metrics than I have learned in the 20 years since. Dale gave one of the best dissertations on safety metrics I have ever heard, and it just made so much sense. It went like this…
Speaking to his staff, who was not very happy with Dale’s increased emphasis on safety and process safety, he began to explain why we would no longer base our assessments on safety successes on OSHA injury rates. When the grumbling began, he shifted course and said he had a new cost-saving idea to save us millions. He wanted us to remove all the instrumentation and QA/QC sampling from the manufacturing process(s). This would mean we remove all scales, gauges, readouts, etc., and all the QA/QC sampling before progressing the material(s). And as a business, we were going to only measure customer complaints in the manufacturing our products. The entire staff, including me, were dumbfounded. He then asked us what we thought about this idea. The staff was painfully honest, and Dale did not seem bothered by their remarks. But he had them hook, line, and sinker.
He then began to explain that he, too, thought the idea was utterly asinine and no manager in their right mind would manage/measure a business in such a manner. He got all nods and agreements.
So why would we measure safety performance like that?
Our employees are our customers in safety, and if all we measure is their injuries, then we are managing the most important process on the property like a bunch of fools.
Who runs a process blindly? Imagine telling an operator to add 300 pounds of Chemical X to Reactor Y but their are no scales to measure the weight.
Then the SOP says to heat up the mixture to 200°F, but there is no temperature indicator.
We then send this concoction to a holding tank with another batch, but we have no level indication on the holding tank.
We eliminated all the process sampling, so we have no idea if the product meets the customer’s specifications. We just package the finished product and hope the customer accepts the order.
Sound silly? That, folks, is the traditional OSH Management System where the only metrics of the “safety process” are the “customer complaints”.
Our safety process/SMS MUST be managed just like our manufacturing process. We need to measure the “PROCESS/SMS” in all its cycles and establish QA/QC metrics for its performance.
Waiting to measure the injuries is quite silly!