The Line Supervisor

The individual with the most impact on workplace safety has to be the line supervisor. Almost everything, which is communicated to the workers, comes from the supervisor. The first line supervisor sets the tone for his or her workplace and is the role model for the company by conveying, implementing, supporting and enforcing all the company s policies and procedures from production to safety. 

Just think of all that the first line supervisor does  

MONTHLY OR QUARTERLY REVIEW SUPERVISOR SAFETY EVALUATION FORM 

Is it any wonder that the success or failure of the safety and health program depends on the first-line supervisor Certainly everyone would acknowledge that the first-line supervisor is responsible for safety and health within his or her work area. But seldom is he or she evaluated on his or her safety and health performance in the same manner as his or her production performance. Until such time that each supervisor is held as accountable for safety and health as production, with equal consequences for poor safety and health performance as for poor production performance, 

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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. 

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. 

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... 

Let s take a look at the reasons why the line supervisor should conduct the investigation. An accident happens because there is a problem somewhere, and the problem exists because... 

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. 

Nonroutine work eondueted in proeess areas must be eontrolled by the employer in a eonsistent manner. The hazards identified involving the work to be aeeomplished must be eommunieated to those doing the work and to those operating personnel whose work eould aflfeet the safety of the proeess. A work authorization notiee or permit must follow a proeedure that deseribes the steps the maintenanee supervisor, eontraetor representative, or other person needs to follow to obtain the neeessary elearanee to start the job. The work authorization proeedures must referenee and eoordinate, as applieable, loekout/tagout proeedures, line breaking proeedures, eonfined spaee entry proeedures, and hot work authorizations. This proeedure also must provide elear steps to follow onee the job is eompleted to provide elosure for those who need to know the job is now eompleted and that equipment ean be returned to normal. 

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. 

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. 

After completion of visual inspection by manufacturing, QAI will perform (a) the review of printout of cold leak test carried out by production and (b) the visual inspection. See SOP (provide number). He gives the release for packing if the results are satisfactory. QAI will fill the optical inspection report attachment no. 1700.30(G) and 1700.30(H) for each batch optically inspected and for leakage. When packaging of the batch starts, the production supervisor will request the area QAI for line clearance. The QAI will check the area and countersign the line clearance given by the supervisor. See attachment no. 1700.30(B). 

The fiberglass acid tank was out-of-service because it had just been washed. If the level in the acid tank was ever overfilled, the 4-inch (10 cm) overflow line would relieve into the adjacent chemical collection sewer. The sewer was scheduled for maintenance. As a precaution to protect the individuals assigned to repair the chemical collection sewer, an operations supervisor authorized the maintenance crew to blind the 4-inch (10 cm) overflow line. The operations supervisor provided instructions to the operators to limit the liquid level within the acid tank to a well-defined maximum. 

Upon completion of the box on Saturday, a self-assured and rather cavalier workman closed the valve on the relief line. The box started to swell. The employee quickly opened the valve and told the shift supervisor that they needed to return to finish up the job on... 

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,... 

The importance of empowerment is easily understood if a problem involves processes from two different departments. For example, if a problem occurs that involves the link between process A and process B in Figure 19-2, the traditional management structure requires that the problem be passed up from the line workers to a section manager or supervisor, a department director, and an organization administrator. The administrator then works back through an equal number of intermediaries in the other department. Direct involvement of line workers and their managers should provide more immediate resolution of the problem. 

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