NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.
Larry Kreh, PPG Industries
Dr. Joseph: The first speaker is Larry Kreh. He is the manager of Ergonomics and Loss Preventions at PPG Industries, in particular the coatings and resins group.
A little background about him. He graduated from West Virginia University with a degree in mechanical engineering. He was hired directly into PPG out of school and had several positions, a couple distinctive positions in production and process engineering, and then kind of switched gears here and went into the loss control side, which I think is an interesting thing, because most of the time our people from health and safety don't come from the engineering side. You don't see that as much. This is kind of nice.
I think what triggered him was this seminar he attended at the University of Michigan with Gary Herrin and other folks. And he got into ergonomics and said, "Hey, this is a match here. There's something here I can deal with." And so he started to fit his mechanical engineering background to some of the issues of safety and health and found there was a good match. And I think that's one of the issues that's a best practice. I think that's some of this theme you heard this morning.
At any rate, there was an opening that occurred in that group, a coatings group. And he got it and became manager of the ergonomics group and also the loss control group.
So Larry, would you please come up here? Please welcome Larry.
MR. KREH: Thank you, Brad. I can't see any of you in the audience right now due to the bright lights I have in my face. I would like to thank Jennifer Silk from OSHA for inviting me to give this presentation today. When she called me up about three months ago, she invited me to Chicago to a conference that was supposed to be about 300 people, and we were going to have a breakout session that would be about 70 people.
You can imagine my surprise last night when I arrived at the presenter's stand and asked to see the room that I would be presenting in and was brought into this room with 1,200 chairs. Quite intimidating, but I'm glad to see that you are all here.
I would also like to recognize our moderator today. Brad probably doesn't realize this, but he has been instrumental in our training at PPG over the years. In addition to providing Dr. Gary Herrin with information that we use at each one of our training sessions, when we are talking about contact stress at PPG -- could I have the projector, please? -- we frequently refer to Brad as the person at the bar.
Brad over the years has been the subject of a lot of comments. We talk about contact stress and why bars put that padding at the bar. At each one of our training sessions somebody says no, that's so you don't hurt your head when you fall down.
So Brad, thanks for that.
A little bit of background information about PPGIndustries. We are a global company employing 31,000 employees. We have 90 manufacturing sites worldwide, 50 of which are in the United States. This session is on manufacturing, but I will mention that our ergonomics process extends far in the organization.
Our research and development facilities, our office complexes have ergonomics processes. And we are also getting our sales and service people involved as of the last month or so. We are putting together some videotapes for the sales/service organizations because they are quite exposed out there in our customer facilities.
There are four major groups within the PPG Industries. I am in the coatings and resins group. Coatings involve more things than just paint today. We have electro-deposition products, powder coatings, surface pretreatments, and then some of the conventional products that you would think of. Some might call it paint. I have heard it said within PPG that paint costs $10 a gallon, coatings cost $100 a gallon; we sell coatings.
Within the fiberglass group, there is an organization which makes fiberglass, obviously, which used to be part of the glass group, which has now been broken off. These organizations have some unique problems in that the heat involved at these locations is quite extreme. When you have molten glass flowing as part of the process, the heat exposures can be very high. And then finally, our chemicals group.
The coatings and resins group, which I work for, is a batch operation, whereas the fiberglass group and the glass groups are for the most part continuous line operations. And then the chemicals group is a combination of both continuous line and batch operations. So they do pose unique problems andopportunities. Although we are one company, our problems are very unique and different because of the manufacturing process, as well as the products.
As far as the history of ergonomics at PPG, one of our facilities in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, got their first taste of ergonomics back in 1987. The glass group saw a lot of opportunity as a result of that study and embraced the ergonomics process in 1989. And then the coatings and resin group followed shortly thereafter in 1990, which is when I was hired into the group to manage the ergonomics process or really facilitate the ergonomics process.
The chemicals group followed in 1991. And then in 1992 our management was so impressed with what was going on at some of these facilities that they wanted to post an ergonomics commitment statement within our locations, which showed our commitment to the ergonomics process.
And the commitment statement is basically: PPG will provide associates with a safe and healthful workplace. The objective of PPG is to perform all tasks in accord with sound ergonomic principles, including without limitation the NIOSH lifting guidelines or their equivalent.
In addition to the NIOSH lifting guidelines, we also have many other resources that we currently use within the organization as well, which I will talk about a little bit later.
As far as the implementation guidelines go, you have heard earlier today the meat packing guidelines was an excellent document. We embraced what was in that document, and we feel that management commitment and employment involvement was the foundation. Fortunately within my organization, management commitment was not a problem. They were more the driver of theergonomics process.
And then obviously the program elements, as defined, the meat packers guidelines works on analysis, hazard prevention control, medical management and then training and education. The training and education within our organization is done by outside consultants, as well as internal experts. We have used Ohio State University, Bill Marras, Dr. Gary Herrin from the University of Michigan, CLMI, some physical therapists, Carol Stuart Buttle, and many other of the organizations that are represented here today, as well as I said before internal experts.
Our ergonomic committee members all attend a three-day session put on in Pittsburgh by Dr. Gary Herrin. This is really the foundation of the education that we give our committee members. You can see the content of the training is quite extensive. It goes far beyond the NIOSH lifting guidelines, includes things such as heat stress, office layouts, controls and displays, and how to implement a process within our organization.
The attendees that come to this meeting, are a good cross-section of the organization, including union representative, production employees, and medical. And you will see the last two items that might be a surprise to some of you, suppliers and customers. The suppliers attending might be fairly obvious, because they are providing equipment, services and products to our facilities. But we have a lot of customers now coming to this training session as a value-added service that we provide to our customers.
I noticed in the list of attendees that many of you are in fact customers of PPG, and I will offer today for you to come to this session. And the way you need to go about doing that isto contact your sales representative from PPG and ask that they sponsor you to come to this class. It's a three-day class that is held in Pittsburgh twice a year. We are very proud of this training session. We feel it would be beneficial to our customers, and we feel it is a value-added service which you can benefit from.
As far as the prioritization of efforts within PPG we look at OSHA recordable cases. We look at that. That's in most cases a reactive mode, but we also look at it as a proactive mode and look at those individuals which have not been injured, which are performing those tasks where others are being injured.
So instead of just focusing on those that are being injured, we also take a look at the survivors and find out what body mechanics they are using or what techniques they are using that are unique that are enabling them to perform the job without becoming injured.
And then we use the NIOSH lifting guidelines. Obviously the job, where the lifting index is greater than three, require immediate attention, and then we work our way down to the lower lifting indexes.
Some of the other ways that we get notification of a need for an ergonomic intervention would be associate complaints or discomfort surveys, production or quality problems, and finally, customer requests. We have had numerous customers come to us and request packaging changes or modifications in the way that we deliver products or services to their sites.
We already talked about injury and illness prevention being both reactive and proactive by using the OSHA 200 logs. The second stage was to integrate the ergonomics process into theengineering services that we provide. At existing facilities, when modifications are made to facilities, part of the authorization for capital requires that a form be filled out to make sure that there are not ergonomics problems being created or there is not an opportunity to correct ergonomic problems that exist.
New construction projects involve a detailed review to make sure that all ergonomics principles are being followed prior to construction.
We really see this as a value-added service to both our customers and internally. And we see this as a strong competitive advantage currently.
Let’s now review initial challenges, fortunately PPG management commitment was not one of them. Management actually forced the process. Employee involvement was difficult at some facilities. Process versus the project. We heard that earlier. Why didn't we have these problems before, if we can't afford ergonomics? And then the injury reporting and classification.
Whenever you implement an ergonomics process, you will see an increase in the reporting of OSHA 200 reportable cases. I believe that the current record keeping guidelines need to be modified, as was proposed in the last draft of the record keeping guidelines to include things such as predominant cause being work related, and also that the injury and illness classification scheme be the same. Currently they are not.
One size does not fit all; lesson learned. Management commitment and employee involvement, the foundation of any process, whether it be ergonomics, quality, safety; continuous versus batch operation, differential needs to be made up front.
There is a tremendous resource commitment made, and Iam not sure that small or even mid-sized companies have the resources that we had available when we started the process, although I am not saying that small companies can't do something that would be equally effective, given their current structure.
Workers' compensation claims is something that people like to look at as an indication of what is going on. This is a claim count. These are not dollar numbers, although the dollar number chart is equally impressive. You can see that back in 1987 we were experiencing 2,500 workers' compensation claims a year. And in 1996 we are down to 1,000. A dramatic reduction, and we foresee that continuing in the future.
Ergonomics is not just about work-related injuries. We feel that the ergonomics process can also bring benefit to away-from-work safety of our employees. For every dollar that we spend on workers' compensation costs, we spend in excess of $10 for health care insurance for our employees. We see this as an opportunity to reduce health care costs as well.
I don't want to leave you with the impression that ergonomics is the only thing that has driven workers' compensation costs down. We have also implemented a very aggressive behavioral or observation safety program, which is showing benefits. And we also have a very aggressive case management system in place to get people back to work as quickly as possible, even if it is in a restrictive activity capacity.
There are so many variables in this question about how effective the ergonomics process is that we have Dr. Gary Herrin under contract to perform a detailed analysis to try to find the correlation, if one exists, and how strong that correlation is. Those results will be available in about one year.
As far as PPG’s OSHA recordable case rates, 1987 is the last change in the OSHA recordable case structure. And in 1996 PPG will be down to an OSHA recordable case rate of three. And I will tell you that at PPG we count everything. I talked to the Dave Schmidts and the Jim Maddoxes down in Bureau of Labor Statistics almost on a weekly basis to get clarification. There are very few people that understand all the interpretations that OSHA currently has in place for the record keeping guidelines. Once again, I support the changes to the record keeping guidelines.
This is a particular case study involving our Berea, Kentucky facility. The facility was constructed in 1990. In 1991 an ergonomics process was put in place. You can see the dramatic rise in cumulative trauma disorders being reported initially. And then the cases have progressed down through 1996. To make this chart even more impressive, the number of workers at this facility have doubled in the same period.
How much did things cost? Sixty-seven percent of the improvements made in the Berea, Kentucky facility cost $500 or less. The other part of the pie chart that might cause some attention is the one that goes up to approximately $1 million, the 12 percent. In this particular, there was only one project that was over $100,000, and that was to install a robot in an area that was not suitable for people to be working due to the heat exposures involved in glass plants.
I would like to give you some real quick examples of before and afters. Fortunately, this is a before. This is a 1940 vintage picture of how we used to manufacture paint. These gentlemen are lifting a keg that weighs 400 pounds and dumping it into a tub for mixing.
This is an activity called breaking a drum. This drumweighs approximately 600 pounds. You can imagine the stress to the shoulders and the backs involved with this. Then he would do what we call chime the drum across the floor. In addition to the strain and sprain injuries we were experiencing, quite frequently we would have amputation of fingers involved with this job when the employee would lose control.
The first stage of the intervention was to provide four-wheel drum trucks to provide breaking the drum much easier and also moving the drum across the floor, although there is still present some shoulder and upper body problems.
This is a drum mover. It is actually a pneumatically driven unit which picks up a drum just by the flip of a switch. And this has removed all the stressors. It is very easy to move drums around in our plants at this time. And we actually have a later version of this being developed.
At our facilities we handle a lot of five-gallon pails, as you might expect in the manufacturing of liquid products. Previously many of these pails were paletized manually. Obvious problems with this, strain and sprain type of injuries. But we were also having quality problems with the package. The labels were being damaged during this operation. A very easy fix to this problem was to install five-gallon pail manipulators, which improved the productivity and the quality of the employees and the products.
We still have a major problem with five-gallon pails, as do probably many of you. The Department of Transportation has put in some requirements regarding the crimping of the lids on pails. And we have had to install pneumatic crimping devices to seal the lids on all of our pails. That's fine where you are making the product, but where you are using the product, you canimagine how difficult it is to get a lid off where it has been pneumatically crimped on, especially given the fact that most of the time the employee is using merely a screwdriver or what I will call a church key device to open the pail. If anybody has a solution to opening five-gallon pails, I would love to hear about it.
In one of our production facilities, this is a line filling what we call F-style containers, this is an improvement made by an employee. It is just a fixture he has attached to avoid basically a very long pinch grip for stacking cans and placing them on a conveyer. It was a fixture made by an employee one to two days after he attended an ergonomic training session.
When you are making paint, you have to tear valves apart continuously, because if you have made red paint before, now you are making white paint, you end up with pink paint unless you clean everything out perfectly. So our valves are continually torn down, rebuilt and cleaned.
This employee was experiencing shoulder and hand problems. Once again, after getting a little bit of training, he just manufactured a small jig device which eliminated a lot of the problem and also got an in-line tool instead of a pistol grip tool.
That's Pittsburgh, a wonderful city. I would like to see you bring the conference there next time. What I would like to do in closing is just read you a statement by our current president and soon to be president of the board, Mr. Ray LeBoef. This is from a video that he is making for all PPG employees to see and all new hires in 1997 to view upon being hired.
He is talking about somebody who recently visited a PPG facility as he states, "'Safety is a way of life at PPG,' arecent visitor said. Here, safety is more than just signs and rules. It is fashionable to be safe at PPG." He's right. The health and safety of those that work for the company, those that work with the company, and those who buy from the company have always been of utmost importance. It's a proud part of the PPG tradition, a tradition that hasn't come about accidentally. Safety at PPG is tradition by design.
Ergonomics was implemented at PPG to improve safety, but we have seen many other benefits through the result of our ergonomics efforts. Thank you.
Does anybody have any questions? I can't see a thing, so just get up there and talk, if you would.
MR. : Yes. I would like to ask if you could explain a little more about the observation and behavioral safety as it reduced your workers' comp claims.
MR. KREH: We are still in the early stages of that process, but we do see some initial trends at facilities that implemented that process. Tom Krause from BST is doing some of our behavioral-based work, but we are also using a management observation training process.
I really think it is too early to draw conclusions from that, but I think that process is very much like ergonomics. We are seeing many other benefits, other than the safety and workers' comp reduction.
MS. : I was wondering if your company has come up with any ideas on what an ideal package weight would be for, you know, your customers as well as your own employees to be handling? Has there ever been any discussions about that?
MR. KREH: That depends on so many factors, I really couldn't answer that question. Package size, where its going to and from. Obviously a container should not exceed 50 pounds without some means of mechanical assist. But there are packages which are 10 pounds that might be too much weight given the circumstances. That's a very difficult question to answer.
MS. : Okay. Thanks.
MR. KREH: One more?
MR. : You mentioned that you had a rate of, what was it, three per hundred, cases per hundred? Is that your rate, your incidence rate, of total injuries and illnesses?
MR. KREH: That is as defined by the OSHA recordable?
MR. : Yes, sir.
MR. KREH: That is correct.
MR. : What is your industry standard?
MR. KREH: Industry standard through NPCA I believe in 1995 was 4.6. And I will state once again that we count everything. And I hope you know what I mean by that.
MS. : Could I ask one more quick question?
MR. KREH: Yes.
MS. : You talked about that three-day training program. Do all of your employees participate in that program, only a select group, or only your ergonomic committee members?
MR. KREH: Well, first of all, our ergonomic committee members rotate through the committee. We have had 1,000 of our 31,000 employees through that training session. So approximately 1 in 30 have been through that.
All members that are on the ergonomics committees eventually get to go through that program, but I would not say all employees get that training, although we do have many other training programs. All employees will be receiving or havereceived some level of ergonomics training as part of their employment with PPG, but not that three-day training session. No.
MS. : Thank you.
MR. KREH: Thank you very much.
