NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.
Question and Answer Session
MR. CIMMINO: I'd like to open it up now and have a question and answer session and a round table discussion if we could. If you could, please speak into the microphones. We're all being recorded here. Yes.
Q: My name is Skip Wilson. I'm an ergonomic consultant with the Saunders Group, Minneapolis. I've been working with the Navy for the past seven years helping develop a corporate ergonomics program and implementing it in the last, corporate wise, in the last two years. And it's interesting that at least Karl and Dan who talked about the processes and the program that you put together. We developed a program with the Navy who doesn't build ships, but they repair them and are constantly cutting them apart and putting them back together basically with the same exposures and dangers that you have.
It's interesting that the programs that we develop from totally different starts, beginnings are almost essentially the same in terms of employee involvement and what works and what doesn't work. And I guess that's more of a comment than a question. For those of you who are in this room, if you want a model, the model of employee involvement just works 100 percent of the time. They know the jobs. They know the fixes and -- so good work.
MR. CIMMINO: Great.
Q: And I've spent time at Newport News, Norfolk, in many of the shipyards.
MR. CIMMINO: Okay. Either of you want to comment on that?
MR. ZIEGFRIED: I also believe in employee involvement. Whether it is in shipbuilding or general manufacturing, employee involvement is paramount to the success of the ergonomic process.
MR. CIMMINO: I'd also like to add that you brought up an interesting point which has to do with the maintenance of the product after it's delivered. And I was involved in a course we called "Design for Ergonomics" where we'd look at the ergonomic aspects of product design from the raw materials used to when it's manufactured in components, final assembly, use by the operators, maintenance and, then, finally, dismantling and recycling.
So eventually what you want to do is start with existing manufacturing processes and work your way up stream. And when you get to the design engineers and you could eliminate the problems in design, that's really where you want to be. I'm sorry, go ahead.
Q: That's fine. That's fine. I'm Russ Hayward. I'm with Mobile Oil Corporation, and I wanted to thank all of you for your presentations. They were excellent, but the question I have for you, Dan, is relative to these task teams. Are they based on -- are they from each department or a craft group, or -- just trying to get a sense of how these task teams --
MR. CIMMINO: We have different types of task teams. Some of them all from the same department. For instance, we'll have a welding task team or we'll have a fitting task team, all from the same trade. Then we have other task teams for a particular vessel or a particular building where we'll have a sheet metal building task team or we'll have a sea lift task team. So different types, some of them all the same trade, some of them cross-functional.
Q: Is it voluntary or do people ask to participate?
MR. CIMMINO: It is volunteer. They're picked, but nobody is forced to participate.
Q: Okay. All right.
MR. CIMMINO: And a lot of times what we do is we find the people who may be complaining about safety or maybe are lax in safety, and those turn out to be our best team members when they start to own the process rather than sit back and take pot shots at everybody else. Very effective.
Q: Thank you.
MR. McGILL: Dan, let me say something.
MR. CIMMINO: Chico, did you have a comment?
MR. McGILL: Yeah. I'd like to say that at Ingalls and the teams that we're beginning to put together now, I serve on the steering committee there. One of the things that we looked at real hard was the fact of the team leader. Our teams will be made up of about six individuals, and the team leader and the employees who will be on the team, there will be a total of five hourly employee and one management personnel. And that management personnel will be somebody selected by the team, somebody that they feel very comfortable with and working with.
A lot of times it may be the person in the area that the team is formed. Right now, to begin with, we're having everybody put in like an application for these teams. And we've set a criteria for the hourly employees as far as their seniority and things of that nature, because of the fact that we have a contract in place that has certain provisions that call for that.
But basically, we look at the idea of the team leader being an hourly employee. Just as Dan was talking earlier about Newport News, how he thinks that that would be a good way to do it. So do we. And I think that's where you're going to get your best input from.
Under the National Labor Relations Act, there's certain things that you have to do in order to be able to pass it to where you don't get caught up in the legalistic of having an employee team that was strictly picked by management. Because then you run a foul of some of the National Labor Relations Act, and that's something that had to be kept in mind when we were starting to put our teams together. But as long as the Union, if you're a represented company or the employees involved in that, you get away from that mess to get into.
MR. CIMMINO: Thanks, Chico. Another question?
Q: Yeah, I'm Sean Gallagher from NIOSH, and most of what you were talking about dealt with the process of building the ship itself. I was wonder, is there any over-running of ergonomics into the actual design of the ship itself? Do you deal with people who -- that design the ships in order to make some of these types of changes come about?
MR. CIMMINO: Are we talking about the people actually using the ship?
Q: Yeah, yeah. The people using the ship or the people designing the ship to make some of these processes work.
MR. CIMMINO: I haven't done that. I concentrate on the workers building the ship, and we haven't gotten involved in the usage of the ship with the exception -- as I said earlier, when you work on a ship, you're essentially repeating processes in the manufacture. So when you make it easier to build, you then make it easier to maintain. So that aspect, yes. But the using of the ship aspect, no.
Either of you have a comment on that?
MR. McGILL: Well, one of the things that the NSRP SP-5 Panel talked about was the fact that -- and if the workmens' compensation cost containment workshop we had was the fact that you have to look at the idea of the end product and what you're using and designing safety into those aspects of things. You know, we're hoping that that's something that they look at in the study that they do, that we're trying to get together. You know, whether that comes about or not, I'm not really sure. But certainly the question has been asked by that panel, and we are looking at that aspect.
Q: Thank you.
MR. CIMMINO: Any other questions? One more.
Q: Joy Flack with OSHA. I want to make one comment. There's a lot of talk about employee involvement, but employee involvement without employee empowerment, you soon lose the involvement. So I think you probably need to use both of those terms. And then the other question I had is when you had the VPP reviews at your facility, did they address ergonomics at their VPP or is that something that you did on your own?
MR. CIMMINO: Okay. I'll hit those one at a time. You're 100 percent correct in that without employee empowerment, involvement is useless. And if you really want to knock the wind out of a group of people, ask them to study a problem and then ignore their results. So absolutely, employee empowerment is critical.
And as far as the VPP, yes, they did look at the ergonomic program, and they awarded us a star. So they must have been happy with it. Any other questions?
MR. CIMMINO: Okay. We're about out of time also. Again, I'd like to thank NIOSH and OSHA for the opportunity to speak here. I'd like to thank my co-chair, Chico McGill and Carl Ziegfried and thank you for attending.
(Whereupon, the Maritime session was concluded.)
