Giant economic entities are strength points of developed nations as being a pioneer in all fields. in automotive industry; corporates like Mercedes, BMW, VOLVO, Audi, come on top of the list and still compete to be the lead the industry globaly. As said “great power comes with great responsibility”, these corporates are required to give more and more to compete and hold the top ranks. To achieve this success, these companies faced millions of challenges, fail, problems till becoming the best, Powerfull corporates use all different types of management systems from the foundation to production & marketing management.
But what about Health and safety management in giant entities ?!! is it Essential and necessary as same as other types of management systems. Does health and safety management deserve the financial investment? or it is useless cost ? is it profitable like production? Or we can ignore it or atleast reduce its cost as much as possible?
If you did not face these kind of questions, congartulations; that means you are in a positive safety culture. if not, you need to read the following:
1 – Wrong management beliefs
for owners and top management,profit comes in the first place, profit Up , cost Down for example: we have two Factories X & Y, both work in metal cutting:
a – Owner of corporate “Y”
Plan to update production line, new metal cutting machine shall be purchased,
they purchased high production capability and HIGH Safefty Features. the machine is higher cost, but they care about health and safety criteria in workplace.
b – Owner of company “X” [ the opposite ]
they are going to purchase new metal cutting machine, they purchased high
high production capability but LOW Safety Machines . They dont consider health and safety neccessity,they highlight only production elements such as: Machines, SpareParts, Power sources, Raw materials, skillful manpower
Such corporates care only about high production rates and profit in first place but not safety of employees
they may consider Health and safety management as over cost and wont be profitable, what they misunderstand that health and safety management in production process is very critical, and special crieteria shall be used to measure financial profit of health and safety management
The management may think their rules only limited to purchase high safety machines and thats all, and no need to health and safety management system, and 0fcourse they are totally Wrong. Health and safety management system measures the situation and assess all risks and level of it in order to prevent all types of accidents, injuries and prevent damage and losses for machines or employees. Health and safety management system as well provide proper solutions to raise safety levels and increase knowledge to fully control all hazards and risks
2 – Do You know about Cost of Accident ?
Yes, Accident can cost a fortune, Remember example of Company “X” which wanted to update the production line, by purchasing high production capability but LOW Safety machines, their strategy does not care at all about Health and safety; the Main target is only money regardless any other matter.
Factual probable scenario after updating production line and starting production prcess
First and second month they could achieved higher production rate and making high profit. But at third month, worker while feeding the machine with metal sheet, his sleeve got entangled and rollers pulled him, all workers ran to help and try to pull him out against rollers, but seem they had no knowledge and training how to stop machine in case of emergency, plus bad design of machine made the emergency stop hard to reach
Think safety – It couldn’t hurt.
– safety advisor
During accident one millisecond can make difference, they could not pull him out and the cutting blades did the task instead;he died immediately, they work stopped and police, ambulace arrived. The company purchased lower price machines ( 750,000 dollars ) while higher features offer was (800,00 dollars dollars).
They choosed the cost reduction and ignored important points like safety standars of the machines, they saved ( 50.000 dollars) but do you know what was the cost of that accident? lets see :
1- cost of machine damage
2- cost of Raw material
3- cost of workplace damage
4- cost of Matienance works required
5- cost of Delayed work
6- cost of running wages without production.
7- cost of time wasted.
8- cost of compensations and insurance.
9- cost of legal actions such as: fines.
10- cost of of losing future work due to bad reputation.
The stupid and greedy strategy of the management to save 50,000 dollars made them pay more, lesson is well learnt to them so learning about health and safety management system is important, implementing health and safety can avoid you losing your bussiness. have a wide vision and never be limited to save few dollars then regret to spend millions
