Safety professionals lean concepts

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. 

Discuss a successful merging of lean concepts and design concepts to show how safety, health, and environmental professionals can be extensively involved. 

Progressive safety professionals will recognize this shortcoming—the nonrecognition of accidents as a source of waste by the appliers of lean concepts—as an opportunity to educate management on the advantage of including safety considerations as the lean process is applied. 

Other safety professionals have recognized the dearth of information in the lean literature on how both safety and lean might be integrated. They have also encountered situations where safety concepts and lean applications were in conflict, with the results being far from satisfactory. 

This Technical Report is an excellent resource for safety professionals who want to understand how the lean process and safety principles can be melded to serve waste reduction purposes while maintaining acceptable risk levels. It provides guidance from the initial concept stage for design and redesign and addresses operational waste reduction applications. 

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. 

However, having knowledge of lean concepts and sustainability are not addressed in the ABET requirements or the BCSP examination requirements. Those subjects present opportunities to safety professionals for meaningful involvement. Some professors, responding to employer comments, have developed courses to address lean and sustainability concepts. 

BCSPs publication that resulted from the latest validation study— the sixth edition of the Certified Safety Professional Examination Guide—has an April 2011 date. That is fairly recent and adds to its credibility. Even though the study is short on lean concepts and sustainability, it is an excellent and highly reliable resource for the purposes of this chapter. And, it will be found that the knowledge and skill subjects listed are a close match with ABET requirements, what employers said in response to the NIOSH study, and the survey made by this author. 

Lean is a business model emphasizing the ehmination of waste while delivering quahty 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. 

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 ). 

Lean concepts are applied to reduce waste and accidents are a form of waste to be avoided. Guidance is given for safety professional as they become involved in lean applications for existing facilities and in the design processes. 

A large percentage of those who attended the Lean Safety events I have facilitated over the last four years have been safety professionals, whose sole focus is safety, or individuals with some safety responsibilities in addition to other responsibilities, that range from environmental, health, operations, and HR. They often do not have a clear understanding of Lean because they have not been included in the Lean activities that take place where they work. Adding to their confusion is the fact that Lean practitioners often use Japanese words to convey their message about Lean tools and concepts. I... 

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