Presentation by William M. Holt, Jr., DuPont Fibers
MR. ALEXANDER: Bill, we will let you talk about the work that you have done at DuPont over the last 10 years.
MR. HOLT: I am Bill Holt from DuPont, and I am a chemist. So the first thing is what in the world is a "test tube toting", beaker breaking chemist doing talking about ergonomics. So you are either up for a rough session or you may come out of here saying that there is hope for everybody. I started, of course, in chemistry, went into research and development and stayed there for awhile until DuPont found that their developments and their discoveries went down. Then I went into manufacturing, and the productivity went down. So they realized that I had some unique capabilities to put me in safety to see if we could get rid of the injuries and illnesses too.
A little background on our plant. The Richmond, Virginia plant is called the Spruance plant -- 2,300 people, soon to go to 2,400. We are bringing in a new product. We do make five products there. So really it is a site with five plants. It is very complex. They are all different.
We started in ergonomics back in 1987, and as Dave referred to, you can think of the ergonomics evolution taking about the same amount of time that it takes to get a college education.
I want to talk a little bit about culture, as well as systems and measurement and how all of these things progress from the beginning to the end. I am going to talk a little bit about managing and a little bit about the directions as we see the future. So you can refer to that first page in your handout. I will refer to it fairly often. You can see from the first graph, how well have we done. This is the number of occupational illnesses that have occurred. The number of occupational illnesses from 1991 to '96 are on the graph or the bar, and I have added to that the number of back injuries that we have had at our plant. We look at most all back injuries as ergonomic issues also.
In 1992 where we peaked, you will notice our exposure hours were almost six million for that year. We had a lot of people there then. We stopped nylon production at the end of '92, and we downsized. You have heard of that before. We lost a lot of people. We went from probably 3,400 or 3,500 people down to 2,200 still making the same production. We did lose the nylon facility. You will see that the total number of illness dropped by one in 1993, even though we lost a lot of people. It dropped a little more the following year, but in '95 we saw the big change.
Well, don't let that fool you because when you lose people, you lose also exposure hours. So what really happened in '93 was we went up because we had less people. I had almost as many occupational illnesses. So it took us awhile to get down to our frequency rate, which right now is running 0.12 last year we had a very good frequency rate. This year it is not bad. This represents total recordables. I am not going to give you workers' comp. dollars because they track right along with it. Less illnesses, less money.
I wanted to talk a little bit, too, about the organization of our company. Now, do you notice anything wrong with that chart? It is upside down. Fantastic. So many companies draw their organization charts that way. The plant manager or the president are at the top. Superintendents, middle managers, first line managers, foremen and then at the bottom; the operating personnel. We draw them different, and there is a reason for that. These people down here are support for these people up here because that is where the action is. That is where the ergonomics takes place. That is where your quality is, controlled by those people who can most effectively change the quality of the product or ergonomics.
If you had a complaint from a customer, who do you send to that customer to investigate that complaint? The president of the company? Very impressive, but who can most determine what I did on my machine last week when I sent that package to him, and make my change? The operator! Now, I will send an engineer with him to talk the technical "stuff" or whatever, but we frequently send the machine operator to that customer because he/she made the yarn.
Now, this person is the site resource, the ergonomist, "the wizard", and everyone of you are wizards in ergonomics. That is the person that drives the program, and helping him or her, would probably be for each of these businesses up here, another resource, directly attached to the business. It could be an engineer or another safety and health person, whoever. So if this is me -- and at our plant that is me -- my purpose is to work myself out of a job. Drive the ergonomics to this point, to the top. (Some people will say to the bottom.) Move your program up. We have done that with safety. Why not do it with ergonomics? Now, that is far reaching. That is a long way down the line, but I think it sort of sets the tone.
Now, let's move on down. Management support is something that works. We have all heard that. We won't spend a lot of time on it. If you don't have management support, it won't work.
Employee surveys, this is a way of measuring your ergonomics. Pain surveys is what I want to talk about. We only ask two questions -- "What hurts?" and "Where does it hurt?" We want to know those tasks that you find very disagreeable, and we want to know what part of the body is affected by it. If you ask 16 questions, you are not going to get very many answers back. Only two questions. So we go to an area and we say "Okay, operators, tell us the two tasks which you dislike the most." They will name them. If you put them through a computer, you come out with the percentage of the response. Most of them name this particular task, which happens to be operating chain valves on the roof, big chain valves. Some of the other things are cutting racks, connecting lines on a railroad car, walking on concrete, transporting with transporters and so on, but what this boils down to is that, "If you have got $10 to put on ergonomics, where are you going to spend it?"
Let's take a look at the second question. Operating chain valves on the roof is one. What hurts you? Lower back, wrists, shoulders and hands, in that order. Does it make sense? Does it correlate with the type of tasks that you see? Yes, it does. Don't spend money on eyes, heat stress, arms and elbows. These are the ones you want to kill first. So that is an example of a pain survey, two simple questions, but get your answers.
Task analysis, after the pain survey you may be asked to take a look at these tasks and let's analyze it. That is a task analysis. Notice something about that. What do you see? One page, only one page. Twenty-two pound bobbins are removed from cases and placed on buggies for further processing. We use the NIOSH lifting formula, and when I looked at that I said, "Gee whiz. Back to calculus 301 again". It looks terrible, but if you have used it -- and I am sure most of you have used it here -- it is pretty good, simple math. What we do is we determine the recommended weight limit for that task as it is done. We recorded the horizontal reach of 28 inches and you start six inches off the floor, and your lifting distance is 47 inches. You come up with a recommended weight limit of 13.8 pounds, but the bobbins weigh 22 pounds. Have you got a problem? Yes, you have got a problem.
The nice thing about this formula is you can go back and make some geometric changes in your lift and determine whether or not that puts you in the right range or not, but we don't want to cover that at this point. That is a task analysis. You can show that to a manager, as long as it is on one page and not a six inch thick book.
Here is another one. Frequently safety and ergonomics get in the way of each other. I work safety also, but before we had ergonomics or learned anything about it, we always put up guard rails in front of moving thread lines and things of this nature to keep people away from it. But then we asked them to bend over the guard rails to put the bobbins on the chucks, and that was another problem that we had to analyze. On the drawing you can see the problem. We call it task analysis.
Total involvement you saw from our organization chart. We wanted to get everybody involved. Self-sufficiency within the business units, I don't know how you organize, but, again, if you have a business unit like we have at our plant or an area, make them self-sufficient. Work towards that goal. Integrate with wellness and fitness programs, as opposed to trailing treatment. Now, I will talk a little about trailing and leading indicators in a minute.
We have wellness and fitness facility. We used to have two doctors on our plant, plus six nurses. We are now down to two nurses. We also have added other people who have expertise in dealing with employee personal and emotional problems. We have a wellness expert in wellness, and we have an exercise physiologist, along with a work out room or exercise facility. What we are trying to do is move medical from treating something after we know it is there, the disease, to preventing the disease. So here we are going from the trailing treatment to the leading prevention. So that culture has changed as well.
Always attempt to capture the economic benefits of everything you do in ergonomics. We have an ergonomics program, a written document just like most all of you, and we spend a lot of time on that first purpose statement, the purpose statement. Now, this whole program is written out on six pages, so it is not that long either. What do you want to do? "You want to implement a proactive, ergonomics program in a way that enables us to identify, evaluate, prevent and control general workplace hazards in ergonomics, increase awareness, involve employees, reduce occupational injuries and illnesses and is cost effective in order to eliminate the exposure of people to ergonomic hazards that may lead to occupational illnesses while capturing the quality and efficiency benefits so that ergonomics becomes institutionalized." There are a lot of words there, but once you get that fixed in your mind and you know where you want to go. The goal is zero. We may not get there in my lifetime, but the goal is still zero.
We are in the middle of an NFL playoffs now. At the beginning of the year, one of the players of the San Francisco 49ers was asked by the announcer, "What is your goal for this year?" and he said, "To make the playoffs". The announcer went to the Green Bay Packers and asked them the same question, "What is your goal for this year?" and he said, "To win the Super Bowl". Who is still in the running? So our goal is zero. So the purpose statement says that; a bold, very bold look.
Now, that brings up things like culture. At DuPont we had a "Discovery team". For years we have been, what everybody said was, good in safety injury control. Yes, we were good, I guess, if you compare us with all the others or most of the others or whatever for our industry group, but we never could get down below this plateau that we leveled out on. We did real good for awhile, and then we got here and couldn't do any better. We were stuck, at my plant, at 10 injuries per year, total recordables. Most of them were medical treatment cases. Now, a lot of people would say now that is not too bad for 2,400 people. You are right. It is not, but we had the goal of zero. What do we need to do to break through?
Well, we looked at the best plants within the DuPont Company, and incidentally, on this team were wage role operating personnel, as well as managers and engineers, a broad spectrum. Culture can go through three changes. We started out years and years ago and said, "Okay, when you come to work I will tell you everything you need to do and I will keep you safe. I am the supervisor. So check in, leave your brain at the gate and do what I tell you". That will prevent some injuries, but we moved from that through to here where eventually we got every individual saying I can take care of myself, don't worry about me, I will work safety. Where do we want to go? We will always take care of ourselves, me and you, interdependency.
How does that translate? Well, when you are in a dependent mode down at the bottom, it is a management commitment, condition of employment, fear, discipline type of culture. You have got a lot of procedures, a lot of training, supervisor control, manager controls. It is the heritage of the company to be safe with no questions asked, but it won't get you very far. It will get you the first notch down, but then you have got to move to here where the individual, the personal commitment gets thrown in here, personal values, personal goals, care for myself, I am a zero hero, I have not been hurt and I will not get hurt. However, We say that is not good enough. Here we want to drive it down further. We are going to have to have commitment dedication, team work. We are part of this whole thing. We need to drive ergonomics the same way.
I talked a little bit about how culture and ergonomics work together and how that needs to tie into how we assess our programs. So based on all of this, be persistent in your drive to a culture based program. Learn to attack leading indicators, not the trailing indicators. Now, let's talk about it. Does everybody know what a trailing indicator and a leading indicator is? Well, you need to think about that a little bit. Is an injury a leading or a trailing indicator? Trailing. How about a serious incident where nobody gets hurt. Is that a leading or a trailing indicator? It is cause for some thought, isn't it? The event already happened. It is over with, but we were lucky that nobody got hurt. If you were standing three feet this way, you would have gotten hurt. Therefore, it is a trailing indicator. The OSHA log, a leading or trailing indicator? Trailing! What are leading indicators? (Show List)
We talked about injury and illnesses that are on the OSHA log or trailing indicators, unsafe acts and unsafe conditions that you observe, trailing indicators. Believe it or not, it is a trailing indicator. A little bit ahead of some of the others, but it is a trailing indicator. The system is there to allow that to happen. I threw in Windows '95 for the computer lovers here -- a trailing indicator because Mac had it back in '85.
Let's take a look at the leading indicators: Behavior, assumptions, our beliefs, culture, the way things are. So we really have got to expand a little bit to get to some of these things. Where are we? We are moving right along here.
Ergonomics is now showing up in other areas. Have you ever heard of PSM, (process safety management)? Let's take a look at that one. This is a drawing of a PSM system. Here we have management, leadership, and commitment, then facilities, personnel and technology that make up the core of process safety management, so that your plant doesn't blow up and hurt you and the community on the other side of the fence. If you will look at these 14 elements that comprise process safety management, you will see buried in there, under process hazard analysis, human factors, or ergonomics.
One of the six basic human systems is cognition. I heard somebody say that ergonomics never killed anybody. Well, I will dispute that. If you find that human error resulted from poor cognition and somebody gets hurt, then ergonomics was involved. So ergonomics is a very broad field. It involves more than just repetitive or motion injuries or cumulative trauma disorder. We teach a lot of things about ergonomics, how to set up displays and controls. So don't forget those things.
Ergonomics should be an essential part of a comprehensive safety program. OSHA, are you listening? They did such a good job on process safety standard that I could visualize that this same drawing could be titled Safety and Health. Now, one of those things out here could be ergonomics; One could be lock out, tag out; One could be hazard communication, etc. This is fancy thinking, but it is a worthwhile goal.
There was a question brought up by a lady at one of the other meetings yesterday. Why do we isolate ergonomics from safety and health? Well, there was a reason. It is new. We are all trying to get it started, and so having a task group for ergonomics that is great. That is the way things get jump started; but somewhere down the line it ought to all come together. People shouldn't get hurt for any reason.
Finally, learn to audit the systems. If you have a simple system, you are going to do a simple audit or a simple assessment. It will be task oriented, but as your culture changes and this thing goes way on out here to the "zero" that we want to reach, and as you drive ergonomics to the people, you should be auditing the "system".
So what are those things in place? It is kind of like finding the root cause. You keep asking "why?". We have a rupture disk that blew out. We sprayed steam into an area, and nobody got hurt, but let's find out why that happened. "Why" did it happen? We put the wrong rupture disk in. "Why" did they put the wrong rupture disk in? Well, they didn't have the right one. "Why" didn't we have the right one? Well, we don't maintain an inventory of different style rupture disks. "Why"? Systems. Eventually, you get down to the point where the system failed. Make sure all the systems are in place.
It has been my pleasure. Thank you very much.
