<span style="line-height: 200%; font-family: " arial",sans-serif;="" font-size:="" 10pt;="" mso-fareast-font-family:="" "times="" new="" roman";="" mso-fareast-language:="" en-ca;"="">There are 12.3 million people employed in the manufacturing sector in US [1]. Canada attributes $609.5 billion of sales and 9.6% of its employment to it [2]. Not only is manufacturing one of the industries that impacts workforce for employment but it is also one of the top four industries that cause the most workplace injuries and fatalities in Canada and US. Canada recorded 2.47 workplace deaths per day which is similar to that of US 3.3 in 2014 [6]. As grave as an average of 3 workplace deaths per day in the two countries sounds, it is still much better that what we had in 1970s.
Issues with manufacturing industry workplace practices resulting in safety incidents
Lack of Safety Controls : The controls and training around safety have changed and have been improved dramatically. Back in the 80s, many manufacturing facilities had few formal controls in place to guide and protect their employees from a safety perspective. Sadly, for some employees, leaving work at the end of the week without some type of injury was considered a bonus. While the use of eye and hearing protection may have been available at some worksites, it was not always enforced for the protection of the employee.
Substandard Safety Measures: At the expense of safety, it was commonplace for guards on manufacturing equipment to be removed and left off the machine to make it easier to maintain the fast-moving parts and blades, and also lubricate the chains and other mechanisms. Today, the removal and negligent operation of machines without safety guards is virtually unheard of, and the use of hearing and eye protection is strictly enforced, as is the use of a breathing apparatus within certain conditions and processes.
Lack of procedures for handling hazardous waste: The free use of powerful chemicals for cleaning, and for preparing and applying coatings back then took priority over how those chemicals and hazardous materials were stored, used in the manufacturing processes and casually disposed of. Waste products that had served their purpose were all too often all poured into the same waste barrel, or worse yet – poured down the drain when the means of getting rid of the waste was as irrelevant as its impact on the environment. Many of the chemicals used 30 years ago are not even available for those same uses today. Of those that are, they require the use of strict protocols for dispensing, storage, supervised use and proper disposal.
Safety Training: Safety-related training and teaching new employees on the proper use of assigned equipment and tools in many manufacturing facilities was also much less of a priority back then compared to what it is today. Thirty years ago, it would have been more likely for you to simply shadow someone who’d been working there longer than you, to learn the tricks of the trade, rather than receiving training through a structured training program that included orientation, safety and job-related instruction.
Automation: The computerization of manufacturing processes, purchasing, inventory control, warehouse operations, safety & health, human resources and payroll have also come a long way since those ‘stone age’ days of manufacturing in the 1980s. Your human resources record back then was a hard copy file, and your payroll cheque was likely generated from a typewriter or by the hand-written one-write payroll system. Manufacturing work assignments were likely conveyed to you verbally or simply attached to a clipboard hanging next to your work station.
What Manufacturing firms do now
Many manufacturing organizations leverage the use of a unified human capital management (HCM) solution as the foundation to support their other business solutions. A comprehensive HCM solution which provides single input and serves to manage human resources, payroll, training and talent management, may also be configured to share information and support comprehensive reporting with other business solutions. These include data sharing with safety and compliance solutions, or systems on the floor of the manufacturing plant that require employee information to assign and manage projects, capture time or piecework for example.
Today, there is a wealth of real-time information that is potentially available across an organization’s suite of business solutions. The opportunities for the integration of these systems and the sharing of their data have never been greater.
References:
- http://www.bls.gov/iag/tgs/iag31-33.htm#workforce
- http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/manuf33a-eng.htm
- https://www.blacklinesafety.com/employee-safety-in-the-manufacturing-industry-8-incidents-you-shouldnt-overlook/
- https://www.osha.gov/oshstats/commonstats.html
- http://www.statcan.gc.ca/tables-tableaux/sum-som/l01/cst01/labr71a-eng.htm