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Carolina's Safety Record Is No Accident
November 1, 2005 By: Tom Andel Paperboard PackagingGoing four years without a lost-time incident requires a culture of safety. At Carolina Container, it gets down to how employees stow snow shovels.
It's been four years since Carolina Container, High Point, N.C., lost productivity due to an accident or injury at its plants. Management is intent on making it to five and beyond by focusing on safety at every staff meeting. General Manager Bill Fruetel says safety is integral to the company's culture. It starts with a healthy respect for its equipment.
 A traffic light system reminds plant employees of the need to be safety conscious. A red light indicates there has been an accident, while yellow signifies a "near miss" has occurred. |
"This equipment is safe to a point, but if you don't keep paying attention you can suck a finger through a machine," he says. "That's why safety is the No. 1 subject around here. We start every meeting talking about safety."
Gene Terrill, Carolina's process improvement manager, looks beyond the converting equipment for safety lessons. For example, during a recent walk through one of his plants, he saw something that bothered him.
"We have snow shovels that we occasionally use to shovel scrap when cleaning blow pipes," he explains. "I walked by a machine the other day and saw that the handle of a shovel was down and the blade of the shovel was pointed out at people walking by."
That's a "lesson" waiting to happen. Terrill plans to turn this into a video lesson before it becomes a lesson born of pain.
"I've been playing around with this program by Microsoft Windows Moviemaker," he explains. "It allows you to create a movie based on your own photos and videos. You also can add music and narration. We're looking at making our own safety movies, organic to our plant, that we can look at any time. We can post these as training files to our server so they're available to our other plants."
In the case of the snow shovels, he envisions taking a picture of what he saw, then depicting the proper way to store them. Terrill plans to include such lessons in the company's learning center library, along with videos from the Association of Independent Corrugated Converters and TAPPI, and industry books and magazines.
 Carolina Container's die room is kept clean to foster an atmosphere of organization and freedom from obstacles to safety. |
Safety on the Agenda
Before that video is made, you can be sure snow shovels, or any other safety issue that crops up, will be a point of discussion at the next safety meeting. Supervisors meet with their employees every week, at the start of each shift: 6 a.m. for the first shift, 3 p.m. for the second. Safety issues discussed at those meetings are then made part of the agenda for the every-other-week, plant-wide management meeting.
The safety discussion might focus on maintenance one week, or good housekeeping the next, depending on the previous week's observations. Employees are trained to identify hazards.
"We teach employees in our safety meetings to look above, behind, below and inside, before working on something," Terrill says. "From there we give work orders to maintenance as they're identified. Maybe something happens on a machine like a broken guard or a jam. We force our employees to take that as a priority and get it fixed as quickly as possible."
Constant Reminders
Although Carolina Container hasn't had safety-related downtime in four years, it does have its share of "near misses." It identifies and documents those, and discusses them at every meeting. It even installed a traffic light system to remind the plant employees of what happened.
"We turn the traffic light to red for 24 hours if there's been an accident," Terrill says. "We immediately communicate there's been an accident and make sure every employee on all shifts is aware there's been an accident and why it happened. We post the details by the time clock, explaining what the accident entailed. The yellow light is for a near miss. If a hazard is identified it is considered the highest priority on our work orders."
Terrill believes such visual reminders stick with employees. He's working on another method where whenever there's an injury, a bandage will be applied to the corresponding injury site on a mannequin to document these incidents.
Videos also play an important role in safety meetings.
"We use safety films that show corrugated machinery in action and accident prevention," Fruetel says. "Picking up loose paper, watching out for oil, cleaning oil up, and lift truck safety are all part of that. All the supervisors, production managers, general manager, truck drivers, and the shipping, converting, and corrugator crew are in on these meetings."
Spreading Recognition Around
Carolina Packaging's plants are divided into groups and safety awards are given out on a quarterly basis. These include gift certificates and other tokens of appreciation. But the best certificate the company has received is shared by all employees. That's ISO 9001 certification. It not only demonstrates safety, but operational efficiency.
"Under ISO 9001, if your lead operator were gone, somebody could step up and do the exact same things he does on a regular basis," Fruetel explains. "Those procedures are documented, so it gives you consistency and accountability as well as traceability."
