Chicagoans may have little to crow about
when it comes to their professional sports teams these days. But employees of
Chicago-based candy-maker Brach's Confections Inc., hungry for a winning team to support,
need look no further than their own workplace. Their rosters may not include the likes of
Michael Jordan or Sammy Sosa, but dozens of workplace teams at the company have been doing
some phenomenal things in recent years, worthy of both support and recognition.
One team in particular, a cross-functional ergonomic safety team that found a way to
effectively solve the costly problem of lifting injuries in the Chicago plant, has been
recognized with Food Processing's first-ever Project Team of the Year award.
The team, comprising employees with varied functional duties and expertise from across
the company's Chicago plant production floor, worked for a year to produce a truly amazing
result, with implications for the health of both the bottom line and the workers on the
production line. Their achievement: slashing lifting injuries by half, reducing
lifting-related workmen's compensation costs 81 percent and bringing the plant to within 2
percent of the national average for lifting injuries.
The group typifies Brach's belief in the team approach to addressing a broad range of
business problems and challenges. The company, which operates five plants in the United
States, has some 70 teams of all types operating at any one time. Since 1994 it has
attempted to involve as many of its 2,000 employees as possible in teams, believing that
worker involvement is good for both morale and the bottom line.
Dan Hochstetter, manager of training and development, sums up Brach's belief in the
team approach by reciting a company mantra that speaks to the underlying rationale for all
workplace teams: "People support what they help create," he says. "That's
the motto we truly believe in. Our belief in teams is rooted in our understanding of the
importance of involving people in solving business problems."
Utilizing the team concept was crucial to the company's ability to achieve its
objective of doing a thorough, step-by-step analysis of its lifting injury problem and
finding a cost-effective remedy, according to Brach's executives and an industry panel
that evaluated the entries.
"They were given the autonomy and the ability to look at the problem and develop
and implement solutions," Hochstetter says. "Everyone knew we had a lifting
injury problem, but it took the team to assess the situation, confirm its existence and
then work in different areas of the plant where the main problems were."
Hochstetter says the cross-functional nature of the worker-centered team, and the fact
that its work required gathering data, gaining detailed input from employees and
implementing changes, made employee acceptance and involvement a critical aspect of the
project.
"The team's makeup mirrored the employees in the plant, and that helped in getting
workers to share whatever knowledge they had that would ultimately help everyone
throughout the plant," Hochstetter says. "Today, if you ask anyone in the plant
who the ergonomics team is, they'd all know. People saw that the team delivered on the
input they were giving, and that management was listening to what they were saying."
A member of the Food Processing judging panel, Marion Stoga, general manager of Fort
Biscuit LLC, Fort Smith, Ark., says creating a team of empowered workers representing a
cross-section of the plant was essential to understanding the problem and forging
solutions.
"The team concept was best for this problem because many employees would have been
bothered by the idea of someone coming in from the outside and telling them what was wrong
with how they were doing things," Stoga says. "With the team, they all saw the
same things, and they were able to get firsthand knowledge from each department and the
nuances of the department in terms of regular activities. What's crucial with teams is
having an environment where those who work on the floor have the freedom and encouragement
to voice their opinions."
Brach's Chicago ergonomic safety team traces its roots to 1995, a year after the
company began to employ the workplace team concept extensively. One of the company's first
cross-functional teams, it grew out of a team originally organized in only one production
area to address ergonomic safety-related issues.
Although the team has maintained a core membership of between six and eight people
since its inception, its roster expands as it undertakes new projects, adding new members
with the expertise and experience to address the specific challenge.
In 1997 management deployed the team to address the mounting problem of lifting-related
injuries at the 2.2 million-square-foot unionized Chicago plant and the resulting negative
impact on productivity, worker's compensation costs and employee well-being.
In approaching its task, the team adopted the problem-solving process that most Brach's
teams follow. The five-step process began with a situation assessment and was followed by
a determination of causes, a targeting of solutions, implementation of action and,
finally, institutionalization--making sure that the solutions remained in place.
An analysis of data collected on work-related injuries in the plant confirmed what
management had long suspected: Lifting was by far the leading cause of injuries. The team
discovered that lifting injuries accounted for 34 percent of all plant accidents, more
than double the national average of 15 percent. In addition, it found that 25 percent of
all workmen's compensation dollars being spent--amounting to about $300,000 annually--were
directly linked to lifting injuries.
"The candy business is an extremely labor-intensive one, and most of our jobs have
traditionally involved manual labor, so that helped explain the high rate of lifting
injuries," Hochstetter says.
Armed with an understanding of the nature and extent of the problem, in May 1997 the
team set its goal: Reduce lifting-related injuries in the Chicago plant by 50 percent in
the ensuing fiscal year, primarily by designing and implementing ergonomically correct
lifting methods.
One of the team's key analysis efforts was learning more about the plant's lifting
procedures. Team members visited all seven plant production areas to identify each job
that required a lift of at least 30 pounds. Using a job rating sheet, the team was able to
quantify the bodily stress that each lifting job generated.
Based on worker input, observation and videotaping of lifting, the team determined that
the lifting factors contributing the most to injuries were the weight of the lifts and
their frequency, as well as the amount and nature of twisting, bending, reaching and
grasping involved in the lift.
The team discovered that more than 75 percent of all lifting jobs required a lift of
more than 30 pounds--a key injury threshold--and that more than 70 percent of all lifts
were of cartons and raw materials. With that knowledge in hand, the team determined that
the problem's solution lay in reducing lifting and also in training workers in proper
lifting techniques.
The effort to target solutions involved everything from evaluating practices at sister
plants and soliciting suggestions from vendors to brainstorming at team meetings and
asking line workers for ideas.
While the team searched for a long-term solution to the problem, it was successful in
implementing several quick-fixes to reduce lifting strain. These included redesigning the
conveyor system to make it adjustable to the worker, instituting a new policy requiring
two-person lifting of bags exceeding 100 pounds, and raising the height of a key work
station to allow for reduced bending and reaching.
Several months into its work, the team was able to develop several permanent remedies.
One called for more regular rotation of employees involved in lifting, a solution that
would address the important factor of lifting frequency. The team relied heavily on line
workers in one work area to design an equitable job rotation system. After determining
through a job rating analysis that the rotation program would indeed reduce lifting
stress, the program was extended to the other six work areas.
Another key permanent remedy was training in proper lifting techniques. Calling on an
ergonomics expert from an area hospital, the team was able to arrange for the training of
workers in proper bending, reaching and grasping techniques that would reduce the
possibility of injury. After training, the team's follow-up assessment determined that
more than 90 percent of employees were lifting properly. Those who weren't were retrained
and coached.
The team also persuaded management to install new equipment that would automate some of
the previously manual lifting processes. One was a vacuum hoist lift that was brought in
on a trial basis after a team member saw it at an equipment exhibition.
After tapping the experience of team members and other workers to modify the hoist, the
team analyzed its ergonomic impact. Finding that the hoist reduced lifting stress by half,
the team persuaded the company to install them in several production areas.
In areas where the hoist lift wouldn't work, the team recommended installation of
hydraulic pallet lifts that would raise cartons to a level where lifting stress would be
reduced. Prior to installation, the team coordinated training and licensing of operators
in accordance with Occupational Safety and Health Administration standards.
With all of its recommended remedies in place, the team re-rated the lifting jobs using
the ergonomic stress rating scale. The changes were profound, Hochstetter says. The team,
he says, discovered there was a 47 percent reduction in overall lifting stress as a result
of the fixes.
More importantly, he says, the team ended up exceeding its goal of cutting lifting
injuries by half, reducing lifting injuries as a percent of total injuries in the plant
from 34 percent to 17 percent, within two points of the national average. Additionally,
worker's compensation costs attributable to lifting injuries were cut by 81 percent, from
$310,000 to $60,000.
And even factoring in the capital expenditures required to implement team
recommendations, corporate safety manager John DiStasio says the company has come out
ahead financially, chiefly because injuries and their related costs are down. "They
spent a good chunk of money, but for every dollar we spent we ended up saving about
$2.58," he says.
While the team's effort to analyze the problem and produce a solution was key, its
continuing work to ensure that lifting injuries don't resurface is equally important.
Among its efforts to "institutionalize" the changes, the team oversaw
development of training videos and permanently assigned two team members to consult with
different work areas; the team continues to coordinate closely with permanent plant safety
teams.
Even more important, the company's other major plants now are looking to replicate the
success of the Chicago team in addressing lifting injuries. "At three plants that
have ergonomic teams, they're now in the process of collecting data on lifting
injuries," Hochstetter says. "Team members in those plants are in regular
contact with members of our team here."
While the Chicago team produced phenomenal results in its award-winning effort to
reduce lifting injuries, it won't be sitting on its laurels, DiStasio insists. "Now
they're working on other projects related to ergonomics," DiStasio says. "As a
result of their efforts, the company has increased its budget for ergonomic projects.
There are a lot more topics on the drawing board that will address such things as computer
terminal work, how people stand at their work areas, and how equipment is evaluated from
an ergonomics standpoint before it's purchased."
