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What is the safest pulp and paper mill on earth? There isn't one is the correct answer. That "greenfield" of new mown grass, unless it contains poisonous snakes or other harmful critters, is the safest a site will ever be.

It follows then, as soon as we start to turn that greenfield into a "greenfield mill site" the safety hazards increase.

At one time, your mill site was a greenfield. It may have been long ago, or it may have been months ago, but it was. Ever since, it has become more and more hazardous.

So, what to do? If adding things makes a site more hazardous, taking them away should reduce the hazards. The problem is, that over time, we get used to the hazards around us and pay no attention to them until we encounter them in an accident-causing situation.

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What are hazards? They can be almost anything. A door is a hazard if it is swung open as someone walks down the hall. That great old consumer products company in Cincinnati realized this decades ago. When I worked there in the 1970's, the tiles on the floors in the technical centers had a permanent, separate yellow stripe incorporated into them that marked the limits of the hazards of swinging doors. It must have been a pain for the tile layers, but the executives of that company were going to make sure they had done everything possible to warn you of outward swinging doors. Again, this was over four decades ago.

That same company bought four drawer file cabinets configured with safeties so that two top drawers could not be opened at the same time, which would result in the cabinet tilting forward. They had been buying these for decades before I got there. This was attention to safety.

Not only in offices, but as we move to operating areas, the safest conditions surround those items that do not exist. Yes, returning your mill to as close to a greenfield condition as you can without hindering efficient production is a goal we can all strive to achieve.

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It is no accident that the safest mills are the cleanest mills and are the mills that run at their highest efficiency. The first efficiency realization is that if there are no accidents, there are no meetings about accidents. This does not mean there are not safety meetings, just that there are no meetings about specific accidents.

The cleanest mills avoid another kind of accident, too. We talk about accidents and safety as it relates to humans. However, a loose piece of broke falling on the sheet is an accident as well. It is one that your mill should avoid and its management is held accountable for at the same level for which they are held accountable for accidents involving people. Note: I am not diminishing the attention to the severity of accidents involving people; I am raising the stature of accidents involving equipment and poor housekeeping.

How do you raise awareness and move to a higher plane of safety by elimination? I would suggest cross department audits. Have your office people go out and audit your production areas. Have production people come in and audit the offices. The list of corrective actions will be long, even in the safest of mills.

Start today. This program may make you an extra fifty tons next week and every week thereafter. It also may prevent a human accident. You have nothing to lose except a bunch of junk that should be off your site anyway.

Any ideas? Please take our quiz this week.

For safety this week, throw something away--anything. Just get rid of one trip hazard, falling hazard, something.

Be safe and we will talk next week.

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