Line supervisor

Management and Employee Cooperation. Before beginning to collect data, the cooperation of the managers involved, including the first line supervisor, and of the workers should be secured. Management needs to be informed so that they can be confident that surveillance activities will not upset production or lead to injuries. Workers need to know what the valuation means to them and how the results are to be reported. Everyone needs to know how the measurement is to be conducted so that the actual measurement causes as Htde dismption as possible. 

The personnel responsible for the collection and analysis of incident data vary in different organizations. One common practice is to assign the responsibility to an investigation team which includes the first line supervisor, a safety specialist and a plant worker or staff representative. Depending on the severity of an incident, other management or corporate level investigation teams may become involved. 

Authority and/or responsibilities of first-line supervisors or operators... 

This group includes operators, mechanics, first line supervisors, auxiliary staff groups such as technicians and engineers, and middle-level management. They should be trained on how to differentiate an incident from a nonincident and what to do once an incident is identified. 

James Reason offered another useful model, often referred to as the Swiss cheese model, that explains how the many factors can converge, resulting in an incident (Figure 6-5). A company tries to promote safety and prevent catastrophic incidents hy putting into place layers of system defenses, depicted in Figure 6-5 as slices of Swiss cheese. Essentially, the term system defenses refers to the safety-related decisions and actions of the entire company top management, the line supervisors, and the workers. This model recognizes that each defense layer has weaknesses or holes. 

The second layer of defenses is the supervision slice. This refers to the hrst-line supervisor and his or her safety-consciousness as well as organizational factors as displayed hy the operational decisions he or she makes. 

Kletz s article also presented the 1976 procedures utilized by Imperial Chemicals Industries, Ltd. (ICI) Wilton, England. It stated that within the Petrochemicals Division of ICI, any modification, even if it is very inexpensive, or temporary, must be authorized in writing by a competent manager (or, in the United States, a second line supervisor) and an engineer. [6]... 

Coordination Procedures - The names, specific responsibilities, and interrelation of the key members of the project team and their line supervisors must be documented early for each specific project. Limits of authorization must also be clearly defined. 

Process Engineers have a dual responsibility to both the Technical Manager and their line supervisors. Their responsibilities are to ... 

An SPC program can be valuable when used on processes where production is steady. The best chance for successful application occurs when a team is formed, comprising the plant operators, first-line supervisors,... 

Primary responsibility for hazards evaluation must reside with the line supervisor directly responsibile for the process. Although a variety of other groups may support and contribute to hazards evaluation, responsibility for the selection of tests, evaluation of hazards, and implementation of appropriate controls rests with the process supervisor. 

For line supervisors and employees covering cleaning and preparation, escape routes, training, monitoring, personal protective equipment, communication devices, emergency planning. 

For hourly employees and first line supervisors, depicts actual accounts from people injured as resuit of risk taking. 

Written and verbal progress reports Typically technical reports (e.g. synthetic chemistry) due to line supervisor and group leader, project progress reports (e.g. SAR) to project team/leader, but varies... 

Performance evaluation Line supervisor with input from project team leader... 

One thing worth noting is that the two boss problem obviously doesn t apply when the project leader and the line supervisor are both the same person, as in the case for Bob s employees on the FTP IB program. Here, the two-dimensional matrix has been reduced to one dimension for the people involved and there s no question of who s responsible for any kind of supervisory activity it s Bob. 

As alluded to above, the person responsible for doing performance evaluations is really the boss, the line supervisor, who knows you and your work most closely from interactions in the lab, probably on a daily basis. There s no one more appropriate. But even he can t know everything about your performance. For one thing, your line supervisor may be... 

A process to confirm adequate preparation and application of controls prior to authorizing work at the activity level should be carried out by a qualified multidisciplinary team. First line supervisors should team with employees and safety and health professionals to ensure the activity-level hazards and controls needed to establish a safe working envirorunent. The hazard and complexity of work should determine the formality and rigor of the review process, documentation, and level of authority for agreement. 

Chemical exposure data as part of the hazard analysis and air sampling should be communicated to the occupational medical organization. These data and information on hazards experienced may be used by the first line supervisor to improve the safety of fiitme activities with the same type of exposures. 

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