More safety with Cierpa Kaizen

Safety is a vital issue for organizations. But how do you ensure that safety is optimally monitored, and safety actions are verifiably secured? Improvement Consultant and former plant manager Philip Stevenije talks from experience on Cierpa Kaizen provides the tool to make the workplace structurally and effectively safer.

 “A safe work environment is essential for the entire organization. Employees are entitled to a safe workplace, and safety also has a significant impact on motivation. Management bears a great responsibility, which can even become a liability when, in the event of an incident or accident, it turns out that required measures were not taken to prevent the situation. When a major incident happens, the organization receives negative publicity, which will reflect on the company’s image.

This makes safety a top priority for organizations. Management team, safety advisor, health and safety team, and line managers: they share the responsibility to take preventive and corrective actions and to always have safety actions verifiably recorded when government agencies ask for them.

Safety is a top priority for organizations.

In practice, this is quite the task. Often, different Excel files are used to follow up on actions: one for safety, one for quality, one for technical issues, and so on. All lists are updated separately, and it's unclear whether they are up to date. The information is fragmented, it's difficult to prioritize and follow up, and there's no overview of its progress. The traceability of the action is far from secured.

Cierpa Kaizen offers the option to organize the entire safety process with all other follow-ups in one central database, which offers many advantages. You'll see that actions will be stored more easily (in an app, amongst others) and will not be forgotten. The process is followed from A to Z and secured with PDCA.

The advantages of Cierpa Kaizen in the safety process are significant:

• You store safety points in a central database

Nothing gets lost, and there is an overview. Safety points that arise during a meeting can be stored instantly. And with the easy-to-use Kaizen app you can take a picture of an unsafe situation on the work floor and store it in the system.

Cierpa Kaizen is a complete system that no longer requires separate follow-up lists. All safety points are stored centrally, and the following improvement process and the optional accompanying analyses have also been stored in the system.

• You can assess safety points and group them on priority, department, and investment

The scope of safety points is comprehensive. It can range from tightening bolts – a job for the technical staff – to a complex safety point that requires a million-euro investment – a project that has to be mapped out by an improvement team. Cierpa Kaizen offers an overview of all improvement points. That makes prioritizing easy. It's also easy to assign an action to a responsible person, department, or team.

• You know that safety actions will always get a response

You can assign tasks to an appointed person, department, or team, and you can assign the right person or persons for every next step in PDCA. This way, everybody knows that the next step is linked to and made by a person or team, while progress is monitored.

• You know that safety actions are verifiably secured

Through PDCA, Cierpa Kaizen leads every action to a secured improvement. That process is recorded and can be demonstrated and included in reports at any time for internal or external use, such as government agencies.

• You can analyze safety issues and chart the associated possible risks

Any safety issue is labeled in Cierpa Kaizen - type, location, machine, and so on. Then, you can use one of the included templates to analyze these issues and work with management and/or the improvement team to chart where potentially new risks might be. You can use this overview to prevent new issues.

A central system like Cierpa Kaizen changes the entire workflow. Previously, when an issue occurred during a meeting or an unsafe situation was noticed on the work floor, it was verbally reported or put in an e-mail to, for example, the production manager. He wanted to do something about it - but maybe forgot to do so. Or he did do something, but it remained with the person assigned to deal with the issue. This way, issues disappeared or were unnecessarily delayed. That is no longer possible.

Issues can no longer disappear or be unnecessarily delayed.

Whether during a meeting or the daily round in the factory, you can store actions directly in the system. During the production meeting, the actions can be further addressed, and they can be supplemented with information on deadlines or the persons or teams responsible.

This advantage, together with securing and traceability of each issue, is of great value for the safety of every factory.”

Safer working with Cierpa Kaizen in your organization?

Cierpa works with skilled improvement consultants like Philip Stevenije. They love to show you how you implement Cierpa Kaizen and how you can use it to improve safety in your organization.