Episode 262: Inside the Gratz Operations Team at MITER Brands

So Bill, for the safety function, what does a strong safety culture feel like on the manufacturing floor?

So to me, a strong safety culture feels like everyone has a voice and a responsibility for safety and everybody is responsible and expected to speak up about safety issues, whether that's their own safety or anyone else or anything else.

They're all responsible for that.

Nice.

That's how it should be, right? Nathan, what's one small habit that has the biggest impact on workplace safety, do you think?

I believe in the Gratz plant, the awareness of the safety culture has been the biggest impact we've had.

We talk about it in general conversations, one-on-ones, our morning meetings every morning.

Safety is the very first thing we talk about.

And that awareness has spread to the team and leads to what Bill was talking about with everybody speaking up and being a part of it.

That's excellent.

Chris, your question is, can you share a moment when someone on the team spoke up about safety and it made a real difference?

Yes.

It was a number of years ago, back right around 2015, I'm going to say.

We unfortunately had a team member who lost a finger due to the fact that he removed a guard from the piece of equipment.

Oh.

And it was at that moment in time that management kind of drew the line in the sand and said, that's it.

If anybody removes and operates a piece of equipment without any guarding on it, they will be terminated.

So a few months later, we came into work one morning and we received a report that there is a team member who came into their piece of equipment in the morning and there were no guards on it, just some tables and stuff that were stacked around the piece of equipment.

So we went and immediately went down And it was exactly what was reported.

So we did a little bit of investigating and we found out that the piece of equipment on third shift broke down.

So they pulled that piece of equipment out, put another piece of equipment in to replace it that had no guarding.

Oh.

And they asked the maintenance manager if he was going to replace the guarding.

And he said, nope, I'm not going to do that.

It's not worth it.

So Bill, for the safety function, what does a strong safety culture feel like on the manufacturing floor?

So to me, a strong safety culture feels like everyone has a voice and a responsibility for safety and everybody is responsible and expected to speak up about safety issues, whether that's their own safety or anyone else or anything else.

They're all responsible for that.

Nice.

That's how it should be, right? Nathan, what's one small habit that has the biggest impact on workplace safety, do you think?

I believe in the Gratz plant, the awareness of the safety culture has been the biggest impact we've had.

We talk about it in general conversations, one-on-ones, our morning meetings every morning.

Safety is the very first thing we talk about.

And that awareness has spread to the team and leads to what Bill was talking about with everybody speaking up and being a part of it.

That's excellent.

Chris, your question is, can you share a moment when someone on the team spoke up about safety and it made a real difference?

Yes.

It was a number of years ago, back right around 2015, I'm going to say.

We unfortunately had a team member who lost a finger due to the fact that he removed a guard from the piece of equipment.

Oh.

And it was at that moment in time that management kind of drew the line in the sand and said, that's it.

If anybody removes and operates a piece of equipment without any guarding on it, they will be terminated.

So a few months later, we came into work one morning and we received a report that there is a team member who came into their piece of equipment in the morning and there were no guards on it, just some tables and stuff that were stacked around the piece of equipment.

So we went and immediately went down And it was exactly what was reported.

So we did a little bit of investigating and we found out that the piece of equipment on third shift broke down.

So they pulled that piece of equipment out, put another piece of equipment in to replace it that had no guarding.

Oh.

And they asked the maintenance manager if he was going to replace the guarding.

And he said, nope, I'm not going to do that.

It's not worth it.