NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.
Jo Spiceland, Charleston Forge
MR. McCAULEY: Our first presenter for this afternoon is Jo Spiceland. Jo, as she's called, is with Charleston Forge in Boone, North Carolina. Jo has been with them for about five years now. It's a small company, a furniture manufacturer, household furniture. She's going to go through some of the things that, as a small manufacturer, she's had to address with her company. Jo.
MS. SPICELAND: Thank you, Jim. By now you've heard a lot of expertise, and I'm not trying to belittle the expertise you've heard, but that's not what you'll hear from me. As Jim said, I do represent a very small company, and you'll hear from me a very common sense approach. In fact, what you see on the screen up there gives you an indication of exactly how I feel, very much out of my league. I'm trying to stay in line but maybe not in step.
I have been asked to present the small manufacturer's view of ergonomics, and that's what you will hear from me. As Jim said, we're a furniture manufacturer. However, we do not take a traditional approach to anything about doing business, including ergonomics. In fact, compared to the larger more traditional companies you heard about this morning, you'll find that we are very non-traditional, and I will give you some examples of that.
One thing we do have in common with small manufacturers is that most managers at small companies, like myself, wear many hats. Ergonomics is simply one of those hats rather than being a specialty field as some of the other gentlemen that you have heard and will hear today. If you represent a small company, hopefully, you will be able to identify with some of what you hear me say. The working definition that we use of ergonomics is similar to what you did hear this morning in that we try to fit the job to the person rather than the person to the job.
This is a basic approach that can be applied at even the smallest of companies. If you are at the very beginning stages of solving ergonomic concerns at your company, you may be wondering where to begin. And I hope that I can give you some basic principles to help you with that today. I am here to tell you, however, that an ergonomic program can be administered successfully even by small companies, and it doesn't have to cost a fortune. In fact, a successful ergonomic program actually saves a company money.
You do not have to choose between protecting the bottom line and protecting your employees. Rather, we have found that the two go hand in hand. Every injury that is prevented saves money not only in terms of workers' compensation claims and premiums but in increased employee comfort which leads to increased productivity and reduced turnover.
As Jim mentioned, the company I work with is in the mountain town of Boone, North Carolina. It is a privately held furniture manufacturer that began quite literally as a mom and pop operation. Twelve years ago, the owners of Charleston Forge, a man and his wife, produced the first baker's rack in their garage. They then snuck that baker's rack into the furniture market in High Point, North Carolina. If any of you are also representatives of furniture companies, you understand that that is basically the furniture capital of the world.
They set up a temporary showroom in a hallway and from that first furniture market, we acquired such customers that are still with us today, as Bloomingdales Department Stores and Spiegel Catalog Company. Charleston Forge has achieved astounding success since that time. Now, only 12 years later, we operate five facilities, including two manufacturing facilities and employ 150 people. We manufacture metal furniture which we sell wholesale to furniture stores, catalog companies and interior decorators. Most people, when they think of metal furniture, think in terms of the chairs that you're sitting in or patio furniture.
However, as you can see, we do not manufacture institutional or patio furniture. Our product line varies from beds such as this to dining tables and chairs to baker racks such as this. And this, by the way, is the same model that was introduced from our owner's garage 12 years ago. It's still one of our top selling items.
We call this piece a hutch. It has significantly more wood with it than the other pieces. We do not work with the wood, however. We purchased that wood unit assembled and finished, and then we add the metal accents and complete the piece. The last category of our product line is occasional tables such as this table you see here.
The processes we go through to manufacture this furniture include cutting the steel which arrives at our facility in anywhere from 10 to 20 foot lengths. These cut parts are then bent into appropriate shapes. Some of them have to be heated or forged, therefore our name. Some of them are bent cold. The pieces are then assembled with a mig-welding process. They then go through a process we call finishing which is actually preparing the furniture to be painted. It is then painted, and we use a powder coating system for that, then packed and shipped.
In the early days, Charleston Forge operated on a shoestring budget as I'm sure many small companies do. And even at times ignored general safety concerns when necessary to get the product out the door. As we grew, however, we began to see where that approach was taking us. We were facing rising workers' compensation costs, increased employee turnover and increased regulatory concerns. Today, however, the success of the company has allowed us to move beyond the shoestring approach.
We now have the resources to do it right the first time, but we face a continual struggle to break the old unsafe habits of some of our employees as well as some unsafe management practices. When I arrived on the scene almost five years ago, my job was strictly human resources. I was responsible for such things as payroll, health insurance administration, hiring; the typical personnel sort of jobs. At that time, I had no training in safety or ergonomics, but as evidence of our nontraditional way of doing business, I was soon given the opportunity to oversee the safety program as well as compliance with our environmental regulations, and this was on top of everything I was already doing.
At that time, the only apparent attempt to control ergonomic risks was limited job rotation. However, that provided limited success as well. I was aware of continuing ergonomic problems from a review of our OSHA logs but was not at that time able to give it the priority focus it deserved, because I had so many other things to learn. As I mentioned, having had no training in safety, I had to learn everything about OSHA, from fire safety to hazard communication to machine guarding. I also had to learn all the Environmental Protection Agency regulations.
But while I was in this early learning phase, other managers took what was basically a back door approach to solving ergonomic concerns, at least in one particular job. They modified this job for productivity reasons. However, along with the productivity improvements, I saw a drastic improvement in morale, turnover and injury rates, particularly the cumulative trauma disorders. This led me to become actively involved with ergonomics for two basic reasons. By then I had developed a genuine concern for our employees, but I also saw the potential for saving money.
I was convinced that improvements could be made in other areas of our company as well. Although our small town offers limited professional resources, I was able to enlist the help of local medical professionals to get me started. I invited several physical therapists and physicians to come to our plant and look at jobs with me that I knew had a history of problems. Several of these professionals agreed to help. And, in fact, they did so free of charge. Until this day, I'm not sure why they were willing to help us free of charge, but am genuinely grateful for the assistance and foundation that they provided to me.
They helped me identify several major risk factors that I'm sure you're already aware of, inadequate illumination, poor workstation design leading to awkward postures, excessive gripping, impact or vibration and lifting concerns. I took what I learned from them and expanded the focus. I began extensive reading about ergonomics, including the then proposed ergonomic standard and was able to develop a company-wide program.
I completed the list of potential problems and began to search for control strategies. I found that the control strategies for the most part identify themselves. This is the common sense approach that I mentioned to you earlier. If you're having a problem with vibration jobs, there are many products on the market available to absorb that vibration. And with us being a metal fabrication shop, we're able to do a lot of tool modification or even tool manufacturing as well as equipment modifications if those are identified as being needed.
Throughout our ergonomic program, if multiple potential problems are identified with a particular task, I identify the possible solutions, whether they be tool modification or adjusted illumination and simply prioritize those based on cost as well as time needed for implementation. Obviously, adjusting lighting would be a much quicker and less expensive adjustment than purchasing or modifying tools. If I could have my slides, please.
That is the original job that we modified for productivity reasons. That employee is operating a wire brush to polish the steel on that chair to prepare it to be painted. It is a pneumatic brush, and as you can see, it's requiring that she use both hands to grip it. It also provided a great deal of vibration.
At one time, we had 30 full-time employees doing nothing but brushing the furniture. Needless to say, we had experienced multiple cases of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome associated with this task.
The next shot shows an up close version of the same task. She's continuing to brush the furniture. In 1994, we purchased and installed this piece of machinery which is a shot blast machine. It is similar to the sand blasting process that you may be familiar with. You can see, compared to the employees, that's a relatively large piece of machinery. And for a small company like us, it was a major capital investment. In fact, we actually had to expand the facility to accommodate that piece of machinery, but we were eventually able to replace all 30 of the brushes with simply two operators of this machine.
Now, when I say we replaced the employees, we were fortunate in that over the period of several months that it took us to fine tune this machine, we were able to reassign the employees into other areas of the company. This machine works by a process of loading the furniture onto a rotating work surface that you can see. The door is then closed, and the machine is turned on, and it circulates a metal shot, very similar to sand, throughout the interior cavity and polishes the furniture.
The next job that we addressed was in our welding department. This gentleman is welding together a baker's rack. I worked with our employee who designs and modifies the jigs which are used to hold the parts in place, because I knew that we had had a history of back injuries associated with this job. I worked with the jig designer to make them height adjustable so that the work surface is more comfortable for whoever is operating it. The way this works, the employee takes the parts and clamps them into place and then goes through and welds each joint. When it is near completion and he's ready to finish the welding and remove it from the jig, he is able to stand the jig in an almost vertical position to complete whatever welding needs to be done. Then when he's ready to remove the article from the jig, he simply pulls it towards himself rather than having to lift it from the original horizontal position. This has not eliminated our exposure to back injury, because it is still a very heavy baker's rack. Some of our pieces are six feet wide, but it is a much less risky position to be pulling it towards you rather than having to lift it.
Over a period of the next several months, we were able to address most of the initially identified problems that we encountered. Our program today consists of several aspects. One unique aspect is that we do no formal across the board training on ergonomics of our work force. I currently work only with an employee committee that works with me on general safety concerns as well as ergonomics. I have educated them on the risk factors and how to observe a task to identify these risk factors. They now help me with that task and are often able to suggest solutions.
They also work with employees in their area to teach better work practices as well as providing feedback to me on employee acceptance of the ergonomic controls. This employee acceptance is not always forthcoming, and I'll give you a recent example of that. The welding department representative on the safety committee recently experienced a back injury himself. Fortunately, it was not serious but it did involve him missing a day and a half of work, and it was a result of him welding a piece of furniture with a jig, and this jig was in use for the very first time.
When he attempted to remove the table from the jig, it caught, and he strained his back. Well, as is our custom in our safety committee, at the next meeting, we discussed his injury from the preventive standpoint of how can we fix this so that it doesn't happen again. We were able to come up with several possible solutions to prevent it from happening again. However, that injured employee, and it was a very frustrating experience to me, voiced that he felt it was unavoidable. That there was nothing that could have prevented him being hurt or that would prevent another person from possibly being hurt.
I voiced my frustration to this employee that if we were going to take approach, we were wasting our time. He later resigned from the committee, I'm sorry to say, and I now have a different representative of that department on the committee. I do hope to be able to convince that original injured employee that we can prevent this type of injury, but I'll have to continue to work on that.
Another aspect of our program is that I continue to use outside expertise where possible. I'm currently working with our workers' compensation carrier to identify possible solutions to an on-going problem in our warehouse. We're continuing to experience back injuries related to material handling in that area. If we should decide that hoisting equipment is the best solution, I hope that our comp carrier will be able to help me justify the cost of that equipment to upper management.
Another aspect of our program that's more preventive in nature is that I am becoming increasingly involved in the planning stages of equipment purchase or modification decisions as well as workstation design. I try to be sure that the safety or ergonomic concerns are taken into consideration when these decisions are being made. I also plan to continue to work with our jig designer to hopefully prevent such injuries as that employee sustained when the jig was used the first time, particularly when we introduce new products.
Another avenue I'm pursuing is through our state OSHA Program. I recently learned that our Consultative Services Bureau has an ergonomist that is available for consultation free of charge. I have learned, however, that we only have one such individual in the whole state, and he has a great backlog. I have requested his assistance, though, and look forward to his input.
We have experienced some success with our program. We began our program in 1993. So as you can see, prior to that time, we had a great many ergonomic-type injuries. The red column indicates hand or wrist injuries. The dark blue column is back injuries, and the other category is something I've lumped together and just named it other, involving such things as shoulder injuries or abdominal strains. As I said, we began our program in '93, and we did experience some success. In 1994, it doesn't look quite so good, but I can at least attempt to justify that.
For six months out of the year, we employed a second shift that year. We learned the hard way that we were not doing adequate training or supervision of that group of employees. In the latter part of '94, we absorbed them onto the first shift and did more training and supervision. And so, in 1995, we had no ergonomic-type injuries. Now, in 1996, we have again seen some cases. However, you'll, see that the 1996 lost days are minimal. Therefore, these injuries are being reported early while they are more easily treated.
In the earlier years, you can see that we did have some significant severity, with a great deal of lost time associated with the injuries that we had sustained.
Where do we go from here? I plan to build on the foundation we've started with expanded education and training and continue my involvement on the front end of purchase considerations. To be honest, like employee acceptance of controls at times, it is a challenge to get upper management to accept my involvement in the planning stages. They're not used to thinking in those terms. They're used to thinking productivity only. But I'm convinced and will have to convince them that in ergonomics, like all aspects of doing business, it's better to do it right the first time.
The most important suggestion I can make to you today, particularly if you're a small company in the beginning stages, is that it is never too late or too early to start an ergonomic program. The payback is there. As I said earlier, I'm convinced a successful ergonomic program saves money and reduces workers' compensation costs, but mostly in increased employee comfort and productivity even for a small company. If you're just beginning to address these concerns at your company, don't let anything deter you even if you don't think you're up to the challenge.
If financial resources are limited, as they were with my company, search out and utilize free help when and where it's available. As I mentioned, the workers' comp carrier or local medical professionals may be available for this service. Educate yourself on the risk factors. Once you're familiar with the concepts, you'll find that solutions come almost naturally.
Thank you.
MR. McCAuley: Talk about wearing a couple of hats. Thanks, Jo.
