Читать книгу Delivering Safety Excellence - Michael M. Williamsen - Страница 13

While I (the author, Mike Williamsen, PhD) was growing up my Papa was an hourly welder in the shipyards. At the end of each day he was bone tired and sometimes injured. I remember his wrist surgery, back surgery and a day when he went to an eye doctor who used a magnet to remove some weld slag from his eye. I never remember him complaining and yet his work‐related difficulties made an impression on me. My mom and Papa lived through The Depression together. They never went to college, but both had the superb work ethic they needed to survive the many difficulties of their era. After I got a degree in chemical engineering from the University of California, I went to work in a petroleum refinery and then in an agricultural chemical facility. One of the important lessons I learned in the field of chemical engineering was the approach of focusing on Unit Operations. In both the classes and laboratories we focused on an individual unit operation, e.g. heating, pumping, distillation, etc., and then tried to optimize all the steps used in that process/unit operation. The unit operation analogy in safety could be something like how to be safe while working at heights, painting, lifting, handling hazardous chemicals, etc.

During my second job after graduation I discovered my interest lay in management rather than research or design. My wife agreed for me to go back to school and get an MBA thus better preparing me to go into the management ranks. My post MBA industrial life became one of turnaround work for the various organizations and industries who employed me. In one industry I was in charge of manufacturing engineering for a Fortune 20 company. In this role I was enjoying the endless challenges of working with plant and headquarters personnel as our small Continuous Improvement (CI/kaizen) teams significantly improved uptime and productivity for the 40 facilities I supported across the United States. In this role I made sure each small team used the unit operations approach of focusing on a single process such as: baking, frying, drive trains, logistics, and the like, and optimizing each step used in that particular process.

Suddenly one Tuesday my boss, Tom, told me about a fatality which had just occurred at one of the facilities. As two senior vice presidents were about to enter the plant, a lady violated a cardinal safety rule and entered an operating crane bay. While focused on her clean up tasks, the crane cycled and crushed this 38‐year‐old mother of three young children. The entire corporation was shocked. As they looked into their records they confirmed an even more shocking history of fatalities, dismemberments, and other serious injuries, which in the past had seemingly been accepted as injuries being an inevitable part of the manufacturing culture. Management prided themselves in being number one in their industry with respect to cost, quality, and customer service, and yet we were in the bottom third of our industry worldwide when it came to injury statistics. A decision had been made at the top that safety would become a measurable, compensable metric for management along with all the traditional measures of cost, quality, and customer service. That decision included that the safety metric must be brought up to world‐class performance just like the others which were tracked. At issue was the fact that over the years upper management continually emphasized the company was a fun place to work. If this were so, the killing and maiming of employees must stop. After all, it was the frontline employees who produced the product which paid all of our salaries. With that crescendo, it had been decided I was to be in charge of safety for the corporation (of course in addition to my regular manufacturing engineering duties and at no additional pay). There were no restrictions on me or what it cost to accomplish this strategic goal of becoming world class in safety performance, though no one could define what world class was.

What a challenge: 10 000 manufacturing employees, 40 facilities strung across the United States, no safety staff anywhere, and only a reactive approach to the latest injury, no matter how serious it might be. I remember thinking “What am I doing in this role? I am an engineering manager, not a safety guy!” As I talked this over with my Papa one night, I distinctly got the vision I was embarking on a journey to save and improve the quality of lives of the likes of him and my mom. And I was all in!

The next steps included a series of jobs to practice all the background learnings I had absorbed, and then I met up with a small family owned company in Oregon, CoreMedia Training Solutions. And the safety journey to a “culture of correct” (developing an organization that lived a sustainable safety excellence commitment) shifted into high gear. As this safety culture engagement excellence process matured, another organization desired to use our tools in developing safety culture engagement excellence on a global scale. That far larger company purchased our very small family owned company and we became employees of a global Fortune 50 heavy industry manufacturer. This sequence of events brings to mind a recent YouTube video on the consequences of how our small, personal acts of kindness and engagement can have far‐reaching effects on others whom we never knew our interactions affected. This message was presented as a metaphor about a person dropping a pebble into a pond and then watching the ceaseless ripples go out, with unknown impact into the unknown surroundings.

As I think about the number of people who have dropped pebbles into my pond, I am amazed how I was affected way beyond what was originally intended by the person dropping the pebble. Early on was a boss I worked for while attending graduate school. I was at a decision point to scrap a long planned graduation vacation with my wife, or go directly into the workforce and make money. I calculated all the financial ramifications and going to work looked very tempting. John, my boss at the time, then talked to me about a metaphorical high paying career of endlessly cracking eggs while sitting in a corner. He contrasted this high paying, mind‐numbing job with seeking out what would deliver a lesser paying career in a field, which would bring personal satisfaction and not just more money. The vacation my wife and I took brought a personal experience and bonding that the extra money could never have delivered. The lesson in the trade off of more money versus a more satisfying personal life experience for the two of us and for our children has replayed (rippled) itself numerous times over the years.

Years later, Dr. Dan Petersen dropped his pebbles in my pond about the importance of culture and accountabilities in developing excellent safety performance for an organization. About the same time, other people in my life dropped some more pebbles in my pond related to creative problem‐solving, continuous improvement, team excellence, and action item matrices. These ripples combined and resulted in the development of a safety culture excellence process that the Fortune 50 heavy industry manufacturer now uses worldwide, which, in turn, has helped to eliminate tens of thousands of serious injuries.

As a result of these people going out of their way to cause caring ripples in my life, I have had numerous opportunities to drop pebbles on how to deliver safety culture performance excellence with safety personnel and associated executives across our planet. Not surprisingly, the desire to help other people, as influential people have helped me, has provided many benefits for my many acquaintances. In turn, they have delivered on their personal desires to spread ripples of learning, way beyond mere safety‐related issues, to many other people.

There are numerous others who have sent both pleasurable and painful ripples into my life. Getting to the point then, what pebbles can you drop into the huge pond of life, which will ripple out over time, to improve the lives of the masses of known, unknown and unseen others? That is the purpose of this book you are about to read (and I hope both enjoy and benefit from).