Dugan Shipway Retires March 31, 2009 - Bath Iron Works

Safety From a Lean PerspectiveApplying principles of LeanManufacturing to help ensure thateveryone goes home the same waythey arrived at work each day is helpingus better understand and reduce injuries.About a year ago, Dave Clark,VicePresident of Manufacturing, requiredthat all manufacturing supervisors,managers and directors take the LeanYellow Belt (first level) training to ensurethat everyone in a supervisory position,including himself, was well acquaintedwith the basics of Theory of Constraints,Lean Methodology and Deck PlateProblem Solving.Root cause analysis is an aspect ofDeck Plate Problem Solving wherecontributing factors to a problem areidentified, categorized and recordedusing a primary/secondary hierarchy.After the brainstorming, scattershotoffering of ideas to build the fishbone,the facilitator proposes a “5-Why’s”exercise where participants examine thefishbone and identify commonalitieswhich suggest a primary driver or rootcause. Striving for five of these “whys,”the analysis continues as the options areevaluated, rejected, or further bolsteredas the group isolates and identifies themost likely whys, or root causes.Getting back to Safety for a moment,Manufacturing uses an Injury InvestigationReport (IIR) to record injuries,document the investigation and monitorfollow-up. This report also asks for theroot cause of the accident. While inYellow Belt training, Clark was remindedthat with all good intentions, it is tooeasy to fail to collect enough data andjump to conclusions when identifying aroot cause. He then experimented withusing root cause analysis with supervisorsduring accident investigations,felt that the approach was helpful andasked Charlie Hammond’s (D10) LeanManufacturing and ManufacturingEngineering groups to assist with implementingthe tool.In January, Berni Sibley (D10) begana series of one hour review sessionsof root cause analysis, noting, “All ofmanufacturing management will havereviewed this topic by the time we arethrough.”Roy Hatch and Ryan McNulty (both D10) reviewing a recordable injury fishbone diagram.Paul Farrin (D10) added, “As we discussthe fishbone diagram and help people putit to use, we stress that we are not changingthe IIR process, but rather providing anadditional tool to help us better understandroot causes.” Paul echoed Dave Clark’searlier concerns that in asking the 5 Why’swithout sufficient supporting data, toooften the wrong causes show up. Paul said,“The fishbone tool helps refocus the inquiry.Because the Lean approach is data driven,root cause analysis stays away from assigningblame and sticks to finding out what happenedand facilitating a fix.”Initially, this method of analysis wasapplied to lost time accidents and seriousincidents but now includes recordableinjuries, first aid visits and pretty much allsafety-related events in manufacturing.Using fishbone analysis, people oftendiscover that the cause of an accident turnsout to be different than what it first appearedto be. For example, in one case, it wasthought that an employee was injuredbecause he was using incorrect personalprotective equipment. However, throughfurther analysis, it was learned that theemployee was repeatedly walking back andforth to access equipment that should havebeen closer to his work station, creating thecircumstances for the accident.Another employee was injured becausehe was working from incomplete documentation.In other words, he was workinglonger, harder and more awkwardly thanwould have been the case if the job hadbeen better described.Another body of evidence points toa category of accidents that occur whenperforming work that should have occurredat a more optimized stage of construction.Cumulative injury is another category.Often, these injuries are reported only aftera period of years, but identifying the causehelps the individual prevent continuousre-injury and helps newer workers avoidthe same mistakes.Berni said, “This process begs you to getgood data.” She explained that with betterdata collection, you are likely to have greaterconfidence that process changes are theright ones.Fishbone analysis to determine rootcauses of accidents is an example of howLean principles are moving throughoutthe shipyard. It also shows how safetyperformance is being attacked using avariety of tools, some borrowed fromother disciplines. Stay tuned for more.BIW NEWS | March 2009 | 11