Safety at Fruitland® Manufacturing – The Power of Following Policy and Procedure

Employee safety is the single most important thing that every company owner, manager, supervisor and employee must take seriously. It should not only be a part of what is “required” to do, but rather it should be designed into the company culture. Safety should be celebrated when successful, and effectively dealt with, when not. Following procedure may seem boring to some, but in fact it can make the difference between life and death.

Safety Scenario

Some years ago, I operated an industrial manufacturing company with an outside service division where we serviced customers in Oil & Gas, Steel, Mining, Automobile, Chemical and Pulp & Paper industries all over Canada. Service technicians were dispatched to locations far away from our branch offices. Each of these companies had different safety requirements, policies, processes and procedures. Aside from having our own internal safety rules and procedures, we had to understand and adhere to all policies and procedures of each specific location in order to be able to do our jobs safely and effectively.

In one situation, one of our service crews was dispatched to a remote location of Ontario. There was an intermittent problem with a rotating piece of equipment. Terry was the lead technician of the two man crew working on a rotating piece of equipment which was operating intermittently.

Trouble shooting this problem required that he stayed near the equipment while Will, also a certified technician, was to operate the equipment remotely. Terry had unknowingly moved too close to the equipment. He believed that Will had received his instruction not to operate the equipment. This resulted in Terry’s shirt getting caught on a sharp edge of the equipment as it was turning and partially dragging him onto the machine. He was able to yell to Will to stop just in time before it was fatal. As it turned out, Terry ended up in the hospital with only minor lacerations to his arm. He was treated and released the same day.

Procedure matters

All stake holders were called to a meeting that day. After our investigation, it was determined that we had followed all procedures correctly. We were able to produce supporting documentation acknowledging both technicians had been recently trained and tested on each of the dangerous elements of their jobs including the troubleshooting process they were performing. The owner had also proven their diligence in the way they indoctrinated the technicians. There were no resulting orders issued to the employee, employer or owner of the property.

Our investigations lead us to revise our trouble shooting procedure. It was unfortunate that the accident happened but it could have been much worse if the correct procedures had not been followed.

Procedures put accountability and functionality into the safety equation. Policy and Procedure – Without a doubt it’s your best safety tool!