Lean Concepts Opportunities for Safety Professionals

Applying lean concepts to eliminate waste, improve efficiency, and lower production costs has become popular with senior-level managements. In a lean endeavor, activities or processes that consume resources, add cost, or require unproductive time without creating value are eliminated. A brief description of the lean concept is striving for excellence in operations in which each employee seeks to eliminate waste and participates in the smooth flow of value to the customer. In Lean, Green and Safe, Michael Taubitz writes in the May 2010 issue of Professional Safety  

Lean is a business model emphasizing the elimination of waste while delivering quality products or services at the least cost. When engineers must practice lean in the course of daily business, doors open for safety professionals to weigh in on issues related to risks to employees and the environment during concept and design of new products or process. (40) 

For safety professionals, lean spells opportunity to make substantial contributions to the business process and to be perceived as providing value. This chapter  

On the Practice of Safety, Fourth Edition. Fred A. Manuele. 

Whatever the origins of the pieces in lean, the leaders at Toyota—as they strove for operational excellence—combined, refined, and converted them with great success into what is called lean in the United States. 

---

Lean Concepts Opportunities for Safety Professionals Applied lean concepts are to eliminate waste, improve efficiency, and lower production costs. Elements of waste that should be addressed in the lean process are the direct and ancillary costs of accidents. This chapter Discusses the origin of lean concepts and how broadly they are being applied Gives examples of lean applications in which hazards and risks were not addressed Comments on the opportunity for effective involvement in lean initiatives by safety professionals and Outlines a unique merging of lean and safety through design concepts. An Addendum offers A Simplified Initial Value Stream Map To Identify Waste (Muda) and Opportunities for Continuous Improvement (Kaizen). 

Later in this chapter, comments are made on a catastrophe in which the management acknowledged in its own internally prepared report that its safety culture, over time, had been allowed to deteriorate. In Chapter 14, Lean Concepts Opportunities for Safety Professionals, reference is made to safety levels being diminished as lean concepts are applied. In discussions with several safety directors, it has been readily established that everyone is expected to do more with less and that bottom-line pressures weigh heavily. 

Chapter 14, Lean Concepts Opportunities for Safety Professionals, discusses how a company merged lean concepts into its design process. Design reviews are made at several stages as the design progresses. 

For safety professionals, lean spells opportunity to make substantial contributions to the business process and to be perceived as providing value. However, very few safety professionals have taken the initiative to be involved in lean and that spells missed opportunities. (Lean is discussed in Chapter 22, Lean Concepts Opportunities for Safety Professionals ). 

---