The 30-Inch View

Continued Need for Compliance Audits?

In a recent blog post on the National Association of EHS Managers (NAEM) site (http://greentie.naem.org/2009/05/26/ehs-auditing-in-trying-times/) Frank Brandauer posed several view points about EHS audits and the future of the function.  One viewpoint struck home with me; “With the rise of EHS Management Systems and related System Audits, the actual need for Compliance Audits has been reduced”.  It is our experience that Safety/Environmental Management Systems and the subsequent audits/reviews strengthen and sustain compliance.  We’ve seen the results in both safety and ergonomics management systems.

Checking on progress toward improvement goals, and compliance to regulations, is a critical activity for any successful business.  William Claude Dukenfield* stated it simply, “There comes a time in the affairs of men when we must grab the bull by the tail and face the situation.”  Managing EHS is dynamic, changing daily with business issues, orders, technology and staffing changes.  To be successful in EHS one must “face the situation” frequently and objectively.    (*also known as W.C. Fields)

As industries and agencies move toward more similar or global standards, auditing for compliance to applicable requirements become one integrated step in the overall process/system for managing EHS. The System ensures compliance at each step rather than driving is by a single event (compliance audit).  Organizations that align their ergonomics improvement process with the EHS Management System or continuous improvement process are successful.  Successful is defined as effective, efficient, sustainable over time, and compliant.

So Frank, in response to the question you posed; “Given the maturity of many audit programs and the current economic and regulatory situation, is it time for a change?”.  The answer is yes.  Organizations that manage EHS/ergonomics as system proactively ensure compliance, but more importantly they anticipate and manage risk.

Contributed by Walt Rostykus  CPE, CIH, CSP

Update from the Applied Ergonomics Conference

Improve – Impact – Influence.  These three words have been the common theme echoed by attendees at the 12^th annual meeting of ergonomic practitioners this year in Reno, Nevada.

 

The keynote address given by the duo of Matthew Pierce and David Copley from the Emcor Company (EME on the NYSE) featured all three of the elements.  They described how ergonomics has “Changed the Way We Work – CW3” at their 30,000 employee strong construction firm and reduced their ergonomic injuries by 71% over a four year period.

1. The first shared key to their success was to influence their C-level executives that the ergonomics agenda is something beyond compliance.  Rather Emcor packaged the process as a value-added entity with the clear position that human motion is money.  By presenting the business case straight into the boardroom their executives understood this was much more than just a health and safety agenda.
2. To improve, Emcor conducted an organization-wide gap analysis of their work methods, tools, and pre-task planning and related it to productivity and injury challenges.  It was identified that supervision needed better support in terms of the knowledge of ergonomic risks, best practices and productivity preparedness.  Hands-on training sessions brought ergonomics into the field at the construction sites (e.g., casinos, waste water treatment facilities, convention centers) where they deployed the process known as superVISION.  
3. The impact to the business hit home when the year-on-year results clearly showed, “For every 1% improvement in productivity there is a corresponding 1% improvement in ergonomic risk reduction”.  Their DART rate dropped from 2.47 to 1.26 and the TRIR rate had a corresponding decrease form 4.6 to 2.5 which is roughly a quarter of the numbers shared by competing companies. The data from their CFO reported that the ergonomic process accounted for approximately $30,000,000 of bottom line benefit for the organization from 2004 – 2008 and has helped position Emcor to be the true leader in their industry.

Stay tuned for a review of the Ergo Cup entries tomorrow…

Using social networking sites to share ergo knowledge

The world continues to buzz about the power of social networking sites, blogs, online forums and other internet-based groups that promote communities of shared knowledge, ideas and opinions.  Would it surprise you to know that there is a Facebook™ group called "Ergonomists of the World"?  Created a few years ago, this group has more than 300 members and is comprised of Health, Safety, Human Factors and Ergonomics Professionals and Researchers from around the world. 

Also, the ever growing LinkedIn online community has excellent groups of Ergonomics, H&S, and Human Factors Professionals. If you are on LinkedIn, we suggest you check out the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society group.  You may find several Humantechers there as participants and contributors! 

In keeping with the theme of promoting communities of shared knowledge, we encourage everyone to take advantage of these resources - start by checking out these two groups. If you know of any other such groups, please feel free to share them.

Contributed by Kevin Perdeaux

Are your improvement initiatives all talk and no action?

Carmine Coyote at Slow Leadership recently highlighted  a blog post by Freek Vermeulen, an Associate Professor of Strategic Management at the London Business School, which pointed out that in reference to management strategies of the past 10-15 years (TQM, Six Sigma, Job Enlargement, etc.)...

"there's little or no hard evidence that they add anything to company performance" and "none of these techniques seemed to have produced any positive benefit on corporate results, despite containing what sometimes looked like little more than basic common sense".

To anyone that has worked for or with large organizations in the last decade, this should not be a surprise. The "flavor of the month" fails for one of two reasons:

1. the initiative is slow to show results
2. the initiative is not driven into the culture from the top down

Let me address the slowness factor first. In many situations, these management strategies involve initiation, definition, and completion of projects that may take weeks, months or even years to close. This long lead time, from initiation of the project to the point where tangible improvements are achieved is not cost effective nor does it contribute to a culture of improvement (were you ever sitting in your office and the landscaping crew starting working outside your window? In the beginning its distracting, but eventually it just fades into the background. Compare this to the continual drumbeat of the latest corporate initiative). Front line employees and senior management want the same thing, improvements and improvements now. Simply put, if you did something for weeks or years and you didn't see any results, would your heart be in it?

In terms of creating a culture, we all know what's important to your boss is important to you...the only way these types of initiatives work is when everyone has performance objectives associated with the plan from the top of the organization down to the foot soldiers, and what's more, they all understand their roles. This will not only drive completion of the tasks necessary for the strategy to be successful, but it is also the best way to create a culture in an organization where one currently does not exist.

A quote from Vermuelen's post really flushes out a key issue:

"Finally the piece-de-resistance: The influence of the adoption of popular management techniques on a CEO's compensation package (salary and bonus)...Yep, you guessed it, and the effects were very strong. If a CEO's firm adopted one of the popular management techniques, his compensation went up."

What Vermuelen found was that the mere appearance of one of these popular programs was enough to give the CEO credibility with investors and the Board of Directors that would merit higher pay. No results, just the effort. Is it any wonder why these programs fail?

Lastly, Carmine Coyote noted, "what all fashionable management fads and techniques seem to have in common is that they promise a quick fix based on a simple recipe"

Unfortunately, too often, the recipe looks a lot better than it actually tastes. All powerpoint, no results.

Efficient+Effective+Effort=Success

  A post at Slow Leadership caught my attention the other day:

“Why you should think seriously about being less efficient.”  Hmmm.

Though it may seem contradictory to what we know and understand in the world of lean and ergonomics, it makes total sense.  Being efficient is all about minimizing waste, increasing productivity, and decreasing costs (think: “How can I do this with less?”).  Being effective, however, is about finding the right solution and thinking outside of the box (think: “How can we do this better?”)  Now it should go without saying that you need both to be successful; but it’s about how you utilize your resources that counts.

As usual,the 80/20 rule can be applied to various functions within a company:

• Hourly employees, line managers/supervisors, line engineers, etc.:
  • 80% of the time this group should be encouraged to look for continuous improvement and efficiency gains; this can be done through team-based kaizen events.
  • 20% of the time this group should be encouraged to seek out new methods, tools, and processes; this can be done through involving them in clean-sheet design reviews.
• Plant management, leadership team, company executives, etc.:
  • 80% of the time this group should be looking for ways to innovate and to be more effective at what they do; this can be done through benchmarking with similar/different industries, market research, etc.
  • 20% of the time this group should be involved in continuous improvement initiatives; this is to ensure there remains a connection to what is currently being done.

Slow Leadership included a statement made by Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon.com, on his thoughts about customer needs.  I thought I’d include a couple of other examples of Bezos’ colleagues (who, by the way, also made it onto this year’s Time 100 list who are models of how to be more effective, not just efficient:

• Indra Nooyi, Chariman and CEO of PepsiCo
  • Rather than just focus on how to be more effective in their traditional market (soft drinks and snack chips), Nooyi pushed for PepsiCo to become a “healthier brand”; purchase Quaker Oats and Tropicana in recent years and removing trans fat from its products well before other competitors.
  • PepsiCo’s international business grew 22% last year
• Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple
  • Rather than spending time, money, and resources making products people don’t want (think back to the days of the good ol’ walkman and discman), Jobs is king of marketability.  Knowing your customers’ wants and needs are far more important than building it fast or cheap.
  • Apple’s stock has increased over 70% of the past year.

If you’re still not convinced, let’s close with a quote from Thomas Leonard, founder of CoachVille: “When you're effective, you are able to accomplish the worthwhile goal you've chosen. When you're efficient, you quickly carry out actions. You won't be effective, however, unless those actions result in your achieving a meaningful goal.”

Are you efficient, effective or efficiently effective? It makes a difference.

Leadership is about people, not assets.

The writings of Sun Tzu, which are collectively called The Art of War, are over 2,500 years old, and yet they are as applicable today as they were when they were first written. Throughout Sun Tzu's writings are the themes of leadership, engagement, communication, planning and preparation, and discipline.

Sun Tzu claims that to succeed in war, one should have full knowledge of one's own strengths and weaknesses as well as those of the enemy. Lack of either might result in defeat. The Art of War was written in a universal style that draws parallels between the challenges in business and those of war, specifically:

§         How are you collecting data and does it originate from both internal and external sources?

§         Do you have the right data on your dashboard or are you still largely relying on business intuition?

§         Can you discern any patterns, gain insight, and extract meaning from the data?

§         How is your organization incentivized to positively respond to and learn from the resultant information?

Modern businesses have deployed automation and information technologies that have led to vast amounts of data becoming available.  The true art is sieving through large amounts of data, extracting useful information and turning that information into actionable knowledge with an appreciation and understanding of the resultant outcome.

 

Sound leadership advice on where to start the journey towards business wisdom comes from the first chapter of Art of War.  Sun Tzu says, "If people are treated with benevolence, faithfulness and justice, then they will be of one mind and will be glad to serve," which shows that workers simply want to be treated fairly and have the faith of their co-workers and supervisors. Sun Tzu tells us that we first must know ourselves and there is no better way for leaders to learn than by getting out of the office and seeing what is really happening in your environment.

Once out of your office, leadership can adopt a consistent and straightforward continuous improvement approach to discern the root cause of successes or problems. 

Consistently ask these simple questions:

§         What was our plan?

§         What actually happened and did we follow the plan?

§         What went right first and how do we sustain that part?

§         What went wrong and ask ourselves why (5-why’s) this occurred?

§         Finally, how do we fix the problem and who is going to be responsible for verifying that it is fixed?

This simple leadership act can be a key to success or failure of your continuous improvement efforts and also serve as positive reinforcing behavior for employees to remain engaged.  This is an important lesson as durable gains in productivity and quality accrue only when your workforce is engaged in a continuous improvement culture. The true goal here is not just to transform manufacturing, but rather to create "thinking people" who are glad to serve and sustain the process. 

Without engaged employees, continuous improvement initiatives die on the vine.  Companies experiencing positive bottom-line effects from their efforts in continuous improvement are doing so because they have learned and adopted the tactics that Sun Tzu described long ago about tapping into a self-reinforcing cycle of respectful employee engagement.

Chart: Ackoff, R.L., "From Data to Wisdom", Journal of Applied Systems Analysis, Volume 16, 1989 p 3-9 

Enterprise Transformation: Extending Lean beyond tools and events

Thanks to Ralph Bernstein at Lean Insider for his post detailing the improvement efforts going on at St. Joseph's Hospital in Parkersburg, West Virginia, owned by Signature Hospital Corporation.

Kudos to St. Joseph's for such an effective demonstration of the power of incremental improvement. Too often the "increments" are over looked or looked over in favor of the bigger bang - but it's the roll-up effect of the little things that is so powerful.

We know how good ergonomics engineering can provide dramatic improvements in takt time by attacking wasted motion even in baby steps. The real challenge, now that the demonstration is successful, is to take it system-wide; as we say - Fix Once, Repeat Many (FORM).

The reason it becomes the greater challenge is that Kaizen events on the factory or the patient floor and improvement projects conducted by experts are not enough. To sustain the gains, Signature must move the game from tools and projects to enterprise transformation. That will necessitate organizational leadership that supports and drives enterprise behaviors - and engages all staff in the cause.

We hope they are successful!

Small IS Significant!

David Zinger's article "A Tiny Secret: Small is Significant" is a great reminder about how small changes can make a big impact, especially when we're all fighting for more time, resources, and money. More often than not, we spend countless hours coming up with the "golden fix" to a problem, and once we have the solution, we spend more time convincing others to fund and support the fix.

Though you can't discount a good solid improvement that raises the bar on quality or productivity, you also can't discount the small changes that make a big difference to the people doing the job 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.

Today, Humantech announced the start of its second annual Find It - Fix It Challenge. The contest recognizes simple and effective workplace solutions that result in increased productivity, imprved worker morale, and fewer workplace injuries and illnesses. The contest is open to all Humantech clients, past or present. We've found that many of these improvements came as a result of our RAPID Team Events (focused four day initiatives aimed at identifying as many ergonomic improvements as possible, and deploying real-time fixes and a 90 day plan to fix the rest, modeled on Kaizen events).

We're looking forward to another great list of entries that prove small IS significant!

photo credit: lazlo-photo

Another secret of TPS

In a recent post by Jon Miller on Gemba Panat Rei (The secret of TPS) he closes with:

  "Toyota has succeeded in building an organization that consistently develops people who strive to make things better by making people better. This is best done bit by bit, day by day, through practice and reflection on how we can better serve others. We will not get the secret of TPS out by tying it to a chair and beating it with a hose. We need to walk inside it and purposefully explore with all of our senses"

Interestingly, many who try to make lasting change (in the way that they work) do not spend enough time developing people. Often, they rely on training sessions for leaders who are then charged with rolling out that message to the shop floor. The key in any change effort is the requirement of a sustained effort of education, coaching, reinforcement, and most importantly "jissen" or practical application.

Taking a 30-Inch view of the workplace involves integrating education for different populations. No matter the environment, what people need are tools for fulfill their piece of the puzzle with resources (time, materials and equipment) that they have at their disposal.

For instance, in training workplace improvement through ergonomics, it is essential that:

• Employees are trained to identify hazards when using a tool or method (i.e. low material height)
• They are empowered to fix them at the start of their shift (i.e. stack extra pallets underneath or adjust the lift table)
• When the workplace can't be fixed, they have a common language to communicate the issue to a supervisor
• In turn, the team leader has the tools to fix that enviroment in 7 days
• Again, if this can't be done, there is an accepted practice to raise that issue to the next level
• And so on, and so on.

In fact, training employees, managers, subject matter experts, engineers and leaders is only part of the equation. Cementing the learning requires working together to apply their new-found knowledge. This means experiencing the problems that occur on the shop floor, learning from each other, and gaining an understanding of the knowledge resorces that individuals have to apply to the problem.

Kaizen  events (we call them RAPID Team Events) are a great way for this to occur. Not only do these events result in immediate changes (or action plans) to improve a workstation, cell or area - the events themselves become learning experiences for participants.

Is your approach to TPS driven in this participative way or do you use the trickle down method of training from the top?

photo credit: Katie Tegtmeyer

Do you have the support you need?

A key theme of the 30-Inch View is respectful employee engagement; understanding that real productivity happens at the individual employee level. As we've mentioned many times before, in order for ANY improvement initiative to be sustained, there has to be buy-in throughout the organization.

Buy-in throughout the organization means at the corporate level as well and a recent survey from Today's Facility Manager magazine points out that when it comes to safety, health and environmental initiatives the number one issue is:

C-suite support is lacking.

FacilityBlog points out the rest of the top 6 for SH&E executives:

• the aging profession/workforce;
• lack of resources;
• the need for more safety training and the need to increase a safety professional's ability to market his/her value/improve the "enforcer" image (a two way tie);
• globalization without safety education and not enough time or funds for professional development (also a two way tie); and
• a shortage of SH&E college programs, increased job demands/job burnout, and outdated PELS (a three way tie).

With all of the press given to sustainability lately, has your organization's support for SH&E initiatives grown?