The Impact of 5S on Safety

By Brice Alvord

A Focus on Safety

Every five seconds a worker is injured. Every ten seconds a worker is disabled. Injured workers lose income and employers in the United States spend more than $60 billion annually due to work-related injury and illness. Safety is everyone’s concern. Many workers continue to work despite their injuries. However, while the loss in quality of life they experience is hard to quantify, it is just as real as any of the other losses. Poor safety conditions exist in all plants. They are inherent to the manufacturing industry itself. It is critical that you focus on pre-accident conditions—hazardous conditions that exist before an accident has occurred.


Difficulty of Maintaining Safe Work Flow

For example, workers can slip from water or grease on the floor. They can be injured from moving machine parts that are not properly shielded. They can be burned in fires from oil or chemical leaks, and material waste is often hazardous after processing. Even detergents and chemical cleaners can be toxic. A fast-paced work flow can be difficult to maintain. People can bang their knees, they can fall from high places, or things can fall on them from high places. Mobile equipment can cause accidents of all kinds. In fact, the organization of the work environment itself may have evolved in such a way that makes it difficult for people to operate their equipment, get needed materials, or work without bumping into things. And when people are not properly trained in the use of equipment, they will make mistakes

The Accident Pyramid

Dramatic injuries hold our attention. However, did you know that for every serious accident there are approximately 29 minor accidents and 300 near misses? The workplace isn’t safe just because a serious accident hasn’t occurred—it’s mostly just luck In fact, many situations that we think are trivial are the real causes of accidents. Most of these problems are below ground or are blind spots. The job of the Improving Productivity & Safety program is to help you see and control them, rather than allow them to control you. You can think of these situations as being underground. It is the neglected conditions that underlie near misses and accidents that you want to discover and eliminate

Safety Improvement Principles

Combining 5S and Safety prevents accidents and near misses by controlling unsafe conditions. Six basic principles will help you apply 5S for a safer workplace.

• Principle 1: Be proactive, not reactive, Of course, you should determine and correct the causes of problems when they happen, but more importantly, you should anticipate problems and try to stop them before they occur. You can’t afford to wait.
• Principle 2: Identify blind spots. Remember, causes of safety problems are always there, but often they are in our blind spots. IP&S gives us a way to dig down and ferret out the problems we don’t see.
• Principle 3: Remove the causes of all accidents and near misses. Remove them or the problem will return
• Principle 4: Always involve workers in safety. Workers are closest to the facts—and have the most to lose.
• Principle 5: Use a systematic method, trips companies up every time. A shotgun approach won’t work. If you’re not systematic you will be overwhelmed by the task in front of you.
• Principle 6: Start now! Everyone should begin to make small improvements and continue to do so every day. If this can’t happen, question your strategy; it is probably flawed

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A Safe Environment


People are not robots. They can’t sustain a high level of concentration for long periods. They will always be accident prone. But we can no longer afford even one accident. When we accept this fact, our entire perspective changes. We realize that employees are safe only when their work environment is safe.

5S helps create a safe environment, it also helps in other area of productivity, such as:

• Improving availability of equipment and machines
  
• Ensuring more reliable Delivery
• Allowing greater product diversification
• Reduction of costs
• Improved quality.

While each of the above items are important for improving performance, non will have as big an impact as improved safety. The figure above shows how 5S and Safety work hand in hand.