KSM plant halves accidents in one year and saves tens of thousands of Euros

KSM Casting Group, a manufacturer of lightweight metal components for the global automotive industry, noticed in 2016 that the previous year’s accident figures at its plant in Wuppertal, Germany were far higher than had been forecast. The company grew concerned about its occupational safety record.

KSM’s Wuppertal plant produces die-cast aluminium parts for the insides of gear units, and machines these unfinished parts. The risks involved in day-to-day work in the plant are those common to the industry, such as insufficient space, danger of trips, slips and falls, risk of burns and in-house traffic.

Oliver Janz, former manager at the Wuppertal plant, recalls: “The attitude at the plant was ‘accidents happen, that’s just how it is.’ We couldn’t change this belief on our own. We tried all kinds of things, but mainly at the higher levels of the hierarchy. There was almost no communication among the employees — no discussion of accidents or occupational safety. We needed help from outside the company.”

After a series of serious accidents, KSM decided that the plant’s workplace safety standards needed deeper investigation and asked DuPont Sustainable Solutions (DSS) to conduct a review. DSS discovered that most of KSM Wuppertal’s accidents were due to individual miscalculations and misconduct.

DSS found that the plant had no clear safety strategy or processes that encouraged long-term management, and that the priority placed on production detracted attention from other areas, including occupational safety. Employees had no roles or targets with regard to occupational safety, and incidents went unreported and uninvestigated. The plant’s management decided to work with DSS to develop new processes and boost employee risk awareness, sparking a fundamental change in both corporate culture and management style.

DSS and KSM began by focusing on change management, staging a strategy workshop to draw up countermeasures and develop a plan of action. At the core of the safety culture transformation was the visible commitment of the plant’s management.

DSS trained all managers in conduct-oriented safety dialogues and observations, and provided one-on-one coaching for top-level leaders. Managers conducted STOP? (Safety Training Observation Programme), designed to demonstrate their commitment to safety and encourage staff dialogue on safety issues. At the same time, DSS and KSM defined clear roles and responsibilities for managers, supervisors and staff members.

Also critical to the transformation was the establishment of practical and enforceable rules. KSM worked with DSS to draw up both general and specific standards, instructions and rules for all employees, temporary staff and external companies.

By the time the safety programme wrapped up at the end of 2017, the Wuppertal plant had recorded a 50% fall in the number of accidents despite a consistent production volume and an increase in the number of staff. The number of working days lost was reduced by 54%, representing a total of €61,500 in cost savings, prompting KSM to expand the programme throughout the entire KSM Casting Group.

They also followed a process that included detailed countermeasures to address specific dangers, as well as a structure within which to analyze future incidents, identify their causes, define and implement appropriate countermeasures and report results to a Safety Steering Committee for review. Additional structures ensured that new rules were consistently implemented and monitored for compliance. These structures were embedded in existing processes to avoid creating additional work for employees.

As a result, safety became an important aspect of daily life for the plant’s managers and staff, with an average of 25 conduct-oriented safety dialogues per week and the presence of posters and information boards around the plant encouraging everyone to reflect on the importance of safety.

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