scenario when a safety improvement yields an unintended productivity improvement as well!
Safety expert Wayne Vanderhoof, CSP, president of RJR Safety, Inc. (www.rjsafety.com), offers a hypothetical example of how safety improvements can increase productivity:
A worker has the task of keeping the feeder on a machine filled by dumping four 50-pound bags every 15 minutes for an 8-hour shift. The small feeder used for the 50-pound bags does not feed accurately, causing the product to not run consistently, thereby causing the machine to shut down and need to be re-started twice per hour on average. In addition, the finished material has to be blended—an extra step.
What’s more, the workers lifting the heavy bags get back injuries.
So the company installs a feeder that can empty bags, eliminating the need for workers to lift them.
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Improved Safety and Productivity
With the modification to the feed system, the machine can automatically be fed with 1,000-pound sacks. As a result, safety is improved and production runs more consistently. The machine is down less often and only needs to be restarted about once every 4 hours on average, and the finished material is of consistent quality and no longer needs blended. And no more back injuries.
If this improvement yields improvement gains of $8,000 per 8-hour shift, and five 8-hour shifts of run time are completed for the product per month, this results in a cost savings of $40,000 in a month. That equals a cost savings in one year of $480,000.
In this example, the initial investment for the new machinery ($45,000) would be recovered in just over one month or in 6 production shifts. This is on top of the savings due to reductions in worker injuries.
Besides all that, there can be additional savings as well, such as production gains when fewer workers are needed to run the machine. One worker keeping the feeder filled by dumping four 50-pound bags every 15 minutes for an 8-hour shift meant two people to operate the machine and frequent overtime to make up for lost production time. Now, with the new feed system, it only take one worker, and any overtime for running the machine is also eliminated.
Other gains could include:
- Buying in bulk reduced costs
- Disposal costs of the 128 empty bags per shift versus returning of sacks to distributor for re-use
- Less scrap
- Less rework
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Improve Your Safety and Reap the Rewards
If you want to keep improving safety and reap the rewards of increased productivity and improved quality, you have to be on top of all the latest developments in workplace safety and health.
That’s where Safety.BLR.com can help. We make it easy for busy safety professionals like you to keep up with all the news, all the regulations, and all the safety improvements, 24/7. You’ll find it all reported and interpreted for you by the safety experts at Safety.BLR.com.
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We’re pretty excited about Safety.BLR.com and all of its enhancements, and we’re eager for you to experience it, too. That’s why we’ve created a complimentary site tour, available here. It takes just 5 minutes.
If you like what you see, you’re invited to try the site at no cost and with no obligation. We’ll even give you a complimentary special report for doing so. Go here to take a 5-minute tour of Safety.BLR.com. It may be just what you’re looking for.