With headcount down at many manufacturing facilities, we all run the danger of getting sloppy. Workers are doing additional tasks to cover the work of laid-off colleagues, in many cases after receiving only minimal training. That’s when injuries can occur. And this is when manufacturers can least afford to lose workers.
A number of years ago, we heard a lot about ergonomics in the workplace. These days, not so much. Much of the research you’ll find was conducted in the early part of this decade or before. Even OSHA seems to have let the matter slide a bit, given that a webpage dedicated to the contributing conditions of poor ergonomics was last revised in March of 2003.
Neglect it at your own peril. The truth is, lean manufacturing depends on optimal ergonomics just as much as it depends on value-stream mapping or continuous improvement. It’s no use streamlining a worker’s job if the tasks that remain promote injury. The venerable Toyota Production System now incorporates ergonomics to create an optimal working environment for both the production system and the workers who fuel it. (See an interview with Yasuhiro Monden, author of Toyota Production System: An Integrated Approach to Just-in-Time.)
No manufacturer wants to lose precious workers to injury, just as no manufacturer wants to run up against a worker’s compensation board. Better to beat them to the punch: The Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation has created a best practices guide for manufacturers that is well worth your time to read. I pulled just two bits of info from the report: The average incident costs a manufacturer $29,000, and “every dollar saved in injury reduction is available purchasing power to the employer.”
After all, the best lean production system won’t be worth anything if its workers can’t work.
Keeping OSHA at Bay
With headcount down at many manufacturing facilities, we all run the danger of getting sloppy. Workers are doing additional tasks to cover the work of laid-off colleagues, in many cases after receiving only minimal training. That’s when injuries can occur. And this is when manufacturers can least afford to lose workers.
A number of years ago, we heard a lot about ergonomics in the workplace. These days, not so much. Much of the research you’ll find was conducted in the early part of this decade or before. Even OSHA seems to have let the matter slide a bit, given that a webpage dedicated to the contributing conditions of poor ergonomics was last revised in March of 2003.
Neglect it at your own peril. The truth is, lean manufacturing depends on optimal ergonomics just as much as it depends on value-stream mapping or continuous improvement. It’s no use streamlining a worker’s job if the tasks that remain promote injury. The venerable Toyota Production System now incorporates ergonomics to create an optimal working environment for both the production system and the workers who fuel it. (See an interview with Yasuhiro Monden, author of Toyota Production System: An Integrated Approach to Just-in-Time.)
No manufacturer wants to lose precious workers to injury, just as no manufacturer wants to run up against a worker’s compensation board. Better to beat them to the punch: The Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation has created a best practices guide for manufacturers that is well worth your time to read. I pulled just two bits of info from the report: The average incident costs a manufacturer $29,000, and “every dollar saved in injury reduction is available purchasing power to the employer.”
After all, the best lean production system won’t be worth anything if its workers can’t work.