After 2 hours of a Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry Occupational Safety and Health
Administration (MNOSHA) inspection in October 1997, the Ritrama plant in Minneapolis, Minnesota, had
received 14 citations, 9 of which were major. Ritrama, a multi-national company with 110 employees
at the Minneapolis plant, manufactures pressure-sensitive films and labels for the automotive,
beverage, health, beauty and pharmaceutical industries.
The MNOSHA citations recommended that Ritrama managers develop a leadership/management program,
involve employees in a safety and health program, appoint a safety director, form a safety committee
and develop an implementation plan for it and develop a recordkeeping program for injuries and
illnesses and plan for implementing it.
Managers at the plant agreed that they had been focusing on day-to-day operations, content with the
status quo and devoting inadequate time to evaluate their current safety and health program even
though the Ritrama philosophy—that nothing is more important than employee health
and safety and that a productive employee who is not safety conscious is a ticking time bomb--was
very important.
In order to evaluate their plant and their processes and correct any problems,
Ritrama managers selected a four-phase plan that included:
- Determining the root causes of the citations;
- Bringing the plant into compliance;
- Establishing a new safety and health program; and
- Ensuring that the above three phases were implemented.
In addition, they hired an off-site, safety and health consultant firm (subsequently
referred to as the Safety Consultant) expert in Ritrama's types of manufacturing to evaluate the
Company's existing safety and health program and the manufacturing facilities. The Safety Consultant
found that established practices and procedures were not being enforced. Specifically,
- Most injuries were a direct result of the employees' failure to follow established safety and
health practices.
- Accidents, injuries and near misses were not properly investigated.
- The treatment for injured employees was not being followed up.
Establishing a successful new safety and health program at Ritrama required
commitment from management and employees. Managers had to be convinced that dedication to safety
and health would enhance employee morale; increase productivity and quality; yield significant
savings in lost time, restricted duty and retraining; reduce the dollars spent on fines and
penalties; and reduce worker compensation premiums.
But, managers needed to invest sufficient power and authority in a new Safety Director to allow him
to implement changes, work closely with top-level managers and ensure that supervisors were directly
accountable for the program's implementation. For their part, Ritrama employees needed to
acknowledge the paradigm shift and understand the performance goals and expectations for themselves
and their co-workers. All Ritrama employees needed to agree to hold themselves and others
accountable and actively integrate the new safety and health culture into their thinking and
actions.
The charts below show the effectiveness of the new safety and health program as evidenced by the
criteria (average lost/restricted days and incident rate) measured. The implementation of the new
program started in 1999 with updating existing programs, establishing responsibilities, setting
structures, and writing new procedures. Mike Conklin, who was appointed as the new Safety Director
in early 1998, summarizes the charts as follows:
In 2000, the managers began to implement the new safety and health program by meeting with the
employees at a series of scheduled gatherings during which they communicated their expectations for
employees and expressed the consequences of not following the new safety and health procedures. In
2001, the managers learned that requesting changes in employees' behavior was not sufficient to
cause it to happen; employees wanted to continue their past behavior. As a consequence, the managers
developed a program of progressive disciplinary action for employees and for supervisors who were
not enforcing the new safety and health program by issuing multiple warnings, then unpaid
suspensions and ultimately terminations. In 2002, the managers reviewed the data and determined that
Ritrama had achieved its goal of a stable workforce committed to the new health and safety program.
I was able to implement a generous rewards program of gift certificates, safety days off, letters of
commendation and cash-on-the-spot awards. [The "spike" in the graphs below was caused by an employee
who, in October 2001, tripped, fell and broke his right wrist. Surgery revealed that this employee
had a pre-existing condition that resulted in multiple surgeries.]
Recordables 1995-2005
![Recordables 1995-2005 Recordables 1995-2005](images/gac_01.gif) |
Lost Time Cases 1995-2005
![Lost Time Cases 1995-2005 Lost Time Cases 1995-2005](images/gac_02.gif) |
Text Version:
Title: Recordables 1995-2005
Type: Vertical Bar Graph
Chart Elements: 11 - One bar for each year showing the number of recordables
Values:
- 1995 = 14
- 1996 = 13
- 1997 = 14
- 1998 = 13
- 1999 = 10
- 2000 = 15
- 2001 = 19
- 2002 = 4
- 2003 = 5
- 2004 = 7
- 2005 = 5
|
Text Version:
Title: Lost Time Cases 1995-2005
Type: Vertical Bar Graph
Chart Elements: 11 - One bar for each year showing the number of lost time cases
Values:
- 1995 = 10
- 1996 = 13
- 1997 = 10
- 1998 = 9
- 1999 = 6
- 2000 = 8
- 2001 = 4
- 2002 = 1
- 2003 = 0
- 2004 = 0
- 2005 = 1
|
Lost Workdays 1995-2005
![Lost Workdays 1995-2005 Lost Workdays 1995-2005](images/gac_03.gif) |
Restricted Days 1995-2005
![Restricted Days 1995-2005 Restricted Days 1995-2005](images/gac_04.gif) |
Text Version:
Title: Lost Workdays 1995-2005
Type: Vertical Bar Graph
Chart Elements: 11 - One bar for each year showing the number of lost workdays
Values:
- 1995 = 107
- 1996 = 82
- 1997 = 20
- 1998 = 19
- 1999 = 19
- 2000 = 196
- 2001 = 20
- 2002 = 180
- 2003 = 0
- 2004 = 0
- 2005 = 3
|
Text Version:
Title: Restricted Days 1995-2005
Type: Vertical Bar Graph
Chart Elements: 11 - One bar for each year showing the number of restricted days
Values:
- 1995 = 269
- 1996 = 189
- 1997 = 214
- 1998 = 105
- 1999 = 161
- 2000 = 69
- 2001 = 266
- 2002 = 0
- 2003 = 11
- 2004 = 0
- 2005 = 0
|
Average Lost/Restricted Days Per Case 1995-2005
![Average Lost/Restricted Days Per Case 1995-2005 Average Lost/Restricted Days Per Case 1995-2005](images/gac_05.gif) |
Text Version:
Title: Average Lost/Restricted Days Per Case 1995-2005
Type: Vertical Bar Graph
Chart Elements: 11 - One bar for each year showing the number of restricted days
Values:
- 1995 = 38
- 1996 = 21
- 1997 = 23
- 1998 = 14
- 1999 = 30
- 2000 = 33
- 2001 = 72
- 2002 = 180
- 2003 = 6
- 2004 = 0
- 2005 = 0
|
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Safety Director Conklin formed a Safety Committee, chaired it, and continued
to utilize the Safety Consultant to keep Ritrama informed of any changes to relevant statutes, codes,
and requirements. Next, he introduced a Zero Accident Culture (ZAC) and kept the employees aware of
it via a series of department meetings and safety awareness lunches. Members of the Safety Committee
either volunteered their time or were appointed by management; they included three permanent members
from management (Operations Manager, Human Resources (HR) Manager, and Safety Director); one
representative from research and development, engineering and maintenance and from each of the four
manufacturing departments; and a manufacturing representative from the second and third shifts and
two representatives from the front office. Committee members attend monthly meetings and hold their
positions for 6 to 9 months. Every employee rotates through the Safety Committee.
Ritrama managers made their commitment to developing a leadership/management program clearly visible
by communicating the goals and expectations of the Company to everyone. To learn how to effect these
changes, the supervisors attended various training courses including Thinking It
Through: The Mark of the Professional Supervisor, a basic supervisory course given by the
Minnesota Safety Council. This course, which is designed to inform employees, including first-line
supervisors and managers, about the importance of personal compliance with safety and health
procedures, covered accountability, responsibility and the consequences of noncompliance as well as
liabilities of both the employer and employees.
Every employee who works on the manufacturing floor is required to attend ten training courses every
year, seven of which (fire prevention, personal protective equipment, hazard communication,
bloodborne pathogens, overhead equipment, lock out/tag out and confined space) are offered on
inter-active CDs; three are taught by the Safety Director or the Safety Consultant. Every employee
takes a test at the end of each course and is required to have a perfect score in order to return to
work. HR maintains the test results and prepares and circulates a monthly matrix of these data to
all supervisors. In addition, two manufacturing floor supervisors attended the Forklift of
Minnesota's training course, which OSHA recognizes as a Train-the-Trainer course, and they are now
training other employees in the safe operation of forklifts.
The plan that managers chose for bringing Ritrama into compliance has five sequential steps:
- Assessing the facility,
- Scheduling audits,
- Conducting audits,
- Reviewing findings, and
- Investigating accidents.
During the facility assessment step, the Safety Director, Department Supervisor
and Safety Consultant evaluate the plant for cleanliness and develop a list of potential hazards. Next,
each month a Safety Committee Member and the Safety Consultant schedule a 4-hour Physical Hazard Audit
for one of the five major areas (the Coating Department; the Converting Department; Plant, Dock and
Raw Material Storage Areas; Maintenance, Packaging and Shipping Areas; and the R&D Lab and Office
Areas). In addition, the Safety Consultant performs an unscheduled audit of the entire facility
every month. The Safety Committee Member and the Safety Consultant conduct the step-by-step audits
on a pass/fail basis; they evaluate the status of the equipment, the safety behaviors of the
employees and the integrity of the facility systems. They record unacceptable results, document them
with photographs and submit the findings and the photographs to the Safety Committee for review.
Then, they post the findings so that every employee can review them. Supervisors or maintenance and
engineering personnel are responsible for correcting the failed portions of an audit that occurred
in their departments. All accidents, injuries, near misses and hazardous conditions reported are
reviewed, studied and evaluated by the Safety Committee at its monthly meeting. Although developing
and studying these reports requires a considerable investment of time, it is necessary. Ritrama has
zero tolerance for non-reports. Says Safety Director Conklin, "You can't fix something you don't
know about."
While the benefits from Ritrama's new safety and health program have occurred throughout the
Company, of special note is the $44,000 reduction of workers' compensation premiums from 2000 to
2003. In addition, the overall benefits to Ritrama include increased productivity and quality of the
products; the percent of credits and returns to sales went from a high of 2.22 percent in 2001 to
1.24 percent in 2006, which when translated into sales figures means that from a production
standpoint, average sales rose 7.5 percent. The number of manufacturing defects and amount of waste
went from $2.7 M in 2001 to $435 K in 2005.
The costs of hiring the Safety Consultant and installing new safety equipment have also been
recovered. The new automated boxing line produces in one shift with two people what had taken two
shifts with three people and eliminates the need for employees to manipulate 20-40 pound boxes, and
the air-assist roll handler eliminates the need for employees to manipulate the 75–125 boxes of
rolls weighing between 25–60 pounds that go into each shipment. Ritrama has not had an employee with
a stress or strain injury to the back, shoulder or neck area in several years.
According to Pat Pothen, Operations Manager, "We work here 24 hours a day with volatile materials
and potentially dangerous equipment. I need to know everyone is on board with our safety and health
program and that the right things are happening even when no one is watching. Over the past 6 years,
our statistics on safety, scrap reduction and increased throughput remain proof that Ritrama has
successfully changed the minds and working habits as well as increased the level of awareness by our
employees regarding the important role that safety plays in our success."
Does a culture of safe work practices contribute to employee recruitment and retention?
"Absolutely!" says David Harrison, Human Resources Director at Ritrama. "Employees need to know that
the company they work for has their health and well being as a major corporate objective." Harrison
goes on to say, "People know if they are being cared for and protected, and I believe our employees
are secure in the knowledge that we take safety and health very seriously. It speaks volumes to
existing and potential employees. Right now, we have 19 people working here who are related to or a
friend of someone else who works here."
Above all, Ritrama Management believes it has a moral obligation to provide a safe and healthy work
environment. "There is no job, schedule or shortcut worth getting hurt over," concludes Conklin.
Says Mike Conklin: "During October 2002, two OSHA auditors visited Ritrama's
Minneapolis plant for 5 days. They issued no citations. I wrote a note to the employees after this
inspection: Pat Pothen and I both thank everyone for an outstanding job. The thing that we can be the
proudest of is that we didn't have to "go into a panic" mode when the inspectors showed up. The plant
is what it is. We don't have to do anything special; we are doing what we are supposed to do on a
routine basis. People are informed and trained. Our safety programs are not given "lip service."
Safety is part of our culture, and we have had measurable results over the past 5 years. This [the
results of the inspection] is no accident. It required time, effort and commitment. Again, thank you."
For more information about Ritrama, please contact
Mike Conklin.
The views expressed herein do not necessarily represent the official position or
policy of the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL).
--
As of May 2007.
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