“At the beginning, it was an EHS project and we were struggling to get the funding. We started to talk about Enablon all around the company…and guess what? What was an EHS project became an enterprise-wide project.”
Olivier Sauvage, Global EHS Analytics, Audits & Reporting Manager at O-I, during the Enablon Excellence Awards ceremony at SPF EMEA 2017.
“It starts with the culture.” We have all heard this statement, or some version of it, to describe what it takes to improve EHS performance. Owens-Illinois (O-I), a Fortune 500 company and the world’s largest glass container manufacturer, is very familiar with the link between culture and performance. With twenty-seven thousand employees across 79 plants in 23 countries on 4 continents, driving cultural and behavioral change around safety is a significant challenge, but can be addressed with the support of leading EHS technology.
Encouraging Employee Engagement at All Global Sites
There are many initiatives at O-I that aim to drive cultural and behavioral change, but two behavioral-influencing tools stand out: near miss reporting, and safety “walks and talks” that improve collaboration between frontline supervisors and workers. O-I even requires each employee to report at least one near miss per month, and each frontline leader to report one “walk and talk” per month. This is meant to encourage employee engagement, more than achieving specific numbers.
But how can you make near miss reporting, and other types of EHS reporting, efficient with more than 20 different Lotus Notes databases and many Excel reports, as well as multiple languages at global sites? Moreover, O-I also needed to address the following:
- Incident reporting and management
- Job Hazard Analysis
- Audits and self-assessments
- Environmental metrics management
- Industrial Hygiene and Occupational Health metrics management
- Corrective and preventive action plans
- Mitigation of risks though lagging and leading indicators
For O-I, the solution was to implement an EHS management software system, in order to make things more efficient, easier and faster.
On June 15, 2017, O-I’s efforts were honored with the . Olivier Sauvage, Global EHS Analytics, Audits & Reporting Manager at O-I, accepted the award on behalf of the Company. Here’s a closer look at the key achievements leading to this recognition.
Feeling the Need for Data Entry Speed
There are many benefits to using an EHS management software, but for O-I the greatest benefit of using Enablon is speed. Previously, employees would report near misses to their direct managers, and direct managers would input near misses in Lotus Notes databases. Needless to say, this process was far from efficient. With Enablon, near miss reporting is available in 13 different languages across the world. Now all shop floor employees can report near misses directly. O-I has already seen an estimated 50% decrease in time when reporting near misses compared with the former approach.
More importantly, by making it faster, simpler and practical to report, there have been already more than 100,000 entries of near misses and “walks and talks” reported by employees in the system since the beginning of 2017, up to the end of June 2017. User-friendliness and the feedback process to the employees that the system allows are key factors that encourage reporting.
Managing Metrics and Performing Audits in a Better Way
Driving cultural and behavioral change is a major EHS focus area for O-I, and near miss reporting is an important part of that effort. Other focus areas are also being addressed with Enablon.
The system is used to collect environmental metrics (e.g. chemical releases, carbon emissions, water consumption), industrial hygiene metrics (exposure measurements of employees to hazardous substances), occupational health metrics (medical issues affecting employees), and perform audits and self-assessments.
The Enablon system also allows O-I to identify trends through reports. Currently, 35 sites in the EU report environmental data on more than 400 indicators. The same sites also report on more than 350 industrial hygiene and occupational health indicators. As with data input around near misses, speed and the time savings achieved make a big difference. Once data is in the system, reports are generated with just a few clicks.
Finally, the system also helps track non-compliance and initiates action plans to address them. More than 300 audits and self-assessments have been deployed at O-I’s 79 global sites so far. Conformity with ISO certifications is also assessed through audits and self-assessments.
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O-I has taken EHS to the next level through a fully integrated platform addressing many key EHS needs, including driving cultural and behavioral change through near miss reporting and other initiatives. We’re glad to have bestowed O-I the Enablon Excellence Award in EHS Performance Management at SPF EMEA 2017.
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