Every spendid thing begins with an idea
Let’s review what I’ve written in the last two posts. We started with cleaning and clearing up all the mess and discarding away all unwanted materials and junks that were left unnoticed for sometimes. This action would clear up some places which can be utilized later for value added purposes. Having done the cleaning and clearing, the next on going activity is to arrange the essential items that left behind in a manner that would clear up our daily activities towards attaining high efficiency. Tagging and classifying these items is a good practice that must be carried out and maintained in order to strive for continuous improvements.
In almost all human activities, getting things done for short period of time is easy but over time our attentions could swerve in other directions and things would gradually return to situation that started off in the beginning. Once this happened, it’s just impossible to recover the time and money that was wasted away. We can't afford to treat these activities like periodic or seasonal carnivals where the activities are only expected to last about a week or one month where the level of enthusiasm was high. The fact that we are so accustomed to this type of life makes us slack in up keeping or maintaining a constant level of concentration over time. Without any doubt, maintaining the orderly arrangement of materials in our workplace for as long as we want it to be is indeed difficult; that’s why in the Japanese kaizen (continuous improvement) of 5S the third step of shining up is simple and vital and acts as a stepping stone towards the more difficult part which is maintaining and making it a part of our daily lives. I will write about it in the oncoming post.
Shining up your working place is a very simple and straight forward act, and yet it being left undone may be because it is too simple or its trivialness is a good excuse for postponement. If you are a person who is very particular about neatness and tidiness, it’ll be good for you to keep up this habit and not be influenced by others who despise it. You can lead the way for your team members to emulate good working practices. Once your habits becomes imbedded and followed by your co-workers you can be proud that you’ve changed the lives of your friends to be more positive towards their work places. The results will be reflected in reducing amount of money incurred by these work places and the income amount will steadily increase.
About 10 years ago, in Japan while going on tour to the historic city of Kyoto, I observed that the drivers of ‘kanko’ (tourists) buses dusted the body of their busses with long feather dusters, some as tall as the drivers themselves, while waiting for their passengers to return to the buses. Practically all the drivers, regardless from what company they belong to, did that routine while waiting for the group of tourists to return from their tour rounds. This acts of dusting entire body of the buses really impressed me. I’m sure that the acts of dusting the buses are still going on until to day. This simple act of keeping their buses shining is important for three reasons. First, is to keep on working and be productive while waiting for their passengers to return in about 30 minutes. Second, the comparatively higher level of quality consciousness of the general public in Japan demands the drivers to maintain a higher standard of services which include the best appearance of the buses all the time. Third, the drivers being responsible employees from their respective ‘kanko’ bus companies must up held the name of their companies, thus leaving the logo or the name of their companies hidden under the accumulated dust would reflect the lazy or poor attitude of the employees. Hence, by keeping the logo or name of their companies under the dust would be committing some sort of sin by the drivers. 
By keeping our eyes on to all the places in our workshop always, will keep away all unwanted items from entering our system. Keep a bin or a basket (an ‘in’ bin) at the entrance of the work shop is an excellent idea of only allowing the things that are worthy to course of the business into the work places. On the opposite end of the ‘in’ bin, you can place another bin that carries an ‘out’ label. Every time after going through the contents of the ‘in’, items that has no value to the improvement of the business like junk mails, ads from local stores, unread portion of newspapers and wrappers can go straight into the ‘out’ bin. This act is a definite time saver, rather than allowing all this junks into the workshop and let them accumulate before actually discard them away later. The golden rule is to only allow the items that require completing of the work cycle in the workshop and to profiting from the completion of the work cycle.
Keeping spic-and-span of every little item in your place that were designed to earning money would result in more money coming at you. Your daily routine is very simple, just follow closely to the routine that I wrote in the ‘Clean up’ post will surely takes you to a prosperous future – Do your clean up routine 10 minutes before work start, 10 minutes after lunch and 10 minutes after you completed the day’s job. No matter where you are or in what business you are in, doing it day in and day out as the best practice because it is THE right thing to keep your business going.
It’s a very good sign that you have already started clearing up your places of work or your workshops. When I did this cleaning and clearing before; I recovered some old bills, important letters, my insurance premium receipts, the screw driver that I thought was taken by somebody else and even some money. That answered why I was behind at getting the right things done on time. No wonder much of my time was wasted looking for these things and it was so bad that I just forgot about the whole thing. I am very careful now not to take any junks or rubbish from outside into my working place. There are just too many junks out there like brochures for machine parts, directories, and catalogs that I brought back from exhibitions or hundred of old diskettes that contain some information that I really don’t need anymore.
Filtering off the items from getting into your workshops is a must to maintain the amount of accumulated stuffs that if left unchecked would develop into time wasted problems later. Make sure that these items are discarded immediately because you don’t actually need them although sometimes your conscience would feel otherwise. If you want to have a collection of items, let the items be something which can appreciate in value over time. Don’t buy some tools just because you need to use them once. We can afford to accumulated useless items and spent money or time to manage their inventories. It’s ridiculous.
Ok, in my last post I attached a photo of a workshop of a violin maker. She got this perfectly arranged cute little workshop that worth giving 10 out of 10 points. For the benefit of you guys, I attached the photo with a slightly higher resolution. Every thing big or small is neatly arranged; materials and tools are in order. It’s a perfect place to wooing money to come. You see orderliness is your next task after first cleaning and clearing away the junks from your workplace. All things come in shapes, type and sizes that enables you to place them in an orderly manner.
Use your creativity to get all the tools, materials, books, etc properly arranged; put in some artistic touch to arranging them in the manner that you are comfortable with. Use your imagination to get this thing done in a satisfying way. As I wrote earlier, small items that are frequently used can be on your table or places that can be assess effortlessly. You might want to use different colors to differentiate different sizes or material types. Yeah, get into the visible management. 
Another hidden benefit of good arrangement is space optimization and you can use the space or area that you have ‘reclaimed’ for more valuable activities. Don’t utilize it for storing items that are supposed to be discarded. May be a place for your meditation or worship…is up to you as long as it is being used for purposes that add values to your work. Orderliness and smart arrangement or our workshops or working places can have a positive impact on your motivation to be more productive. Make our work places as the places for the minds to be inspired to do more and to get more without burning extra energy. As I told you earlier money has no eyes, but it has class when choosing a place for to reside.
Is your work place messy and unorganized? If it is; than the right thing to do is to clean up. Make sure that you got the place for everything; no matter how small it is just get a place for it. A clean, tidy and an organized work place is where the money likes to be; no argument. It is where the money and other good things like to associate with, no question about it.
How can you know that your place needs cleaning? One sure answer is, when you can’t find the things that you need and knew pretty well that you saw where they were a day or two earlier. Let’s say that you need a Philips head screw driver to open up your desktop pc and you just can’t find the screw driver that you had used it 2 days ago; then you’d better get organized. Or, when there’s a sudden black-out and you can’t find the flash light which you think it is still in the first draw of your work table. There were numerous cases that you and I had experienced that tell us to get tidy up and get organized.
The examples above tell us that when our work places are messy and things are all over the place, we are wasting valuable time. In time management, the first thing that we have to do before even before getting your planner right; is to get all things at the right places. Time is so precious because unlike money, once its loss it’s unrecoverable – that simple. If you lose a day, you are behind your competitor by one day, and there’s no way that you can be head unless you have to put in 200% effort just to get even and another 100% increase to be ahead, in simple term, you have to put 3 times your normal effort to get head again by just losing one day. That’s why we just can’t afford to let our bad habits to interfere with our ambitions.
Besides, a clean and organized work place is an ideal place to conduct business, rest assured that there won’t be any hidden danger which could strike you when you least expected it. All movements would be smooth and jobs would be conducted swiftly and as a result money would come in quicker.
Start cleaning up by putting or placing things in it proper places. If you can’t find a place for some items, just throw them in a bin which you can sort out later after you complete the cleaning job. No, no… don’t procrastinate; start sorting up the items you collected in the bin and figure out how can you get proper places for them. Well, for some items that got not value to you, just get rid of them by giving them away or sell them off. Label your drawers, cabinets and lockers, they are essential because you can’t see them once you’d locked them up. Place all the frequently used items near to you, an arm length about you or make them visible to you.You see cleaning up your habit and your work place would bring you more good luck than bad ones. It’s simple; just use your 10mins before starting work, 10mins just after lunch and 10 minutes before closing for the day, everyday without fail would bring you good luck. How about that?
To be free from accident one must have a positive mental attitude towards safety, one's jobs, co-workers, the business and to oneself. Mental alertness of this sort could only be attained when absolute focus is given on the tasks that are being performed. Take a very simple task of filling a mug of hot coffee, although we might have done it thousands of times before, we might not realize that our bodily actions for pouring the coffee is being controlled by our mind. Just before this task is being carried out our minds will alert us the important facts like, the coffee is hot, the cup or mug should be on a stable base and remind us not to fill it until its rim. Thus, with all these mental alertness facts the risk of having hot coffee spilled on to our bodies or somebody else’s hands would be eliminated. It’s very natural for us to look and also hearing the sound of pouring hot coffee in a mug before deciding that the coffee has reached a safe height in the mug.
I came across a number of cases where injuries happened when the victims were 
not aware of the imminent dangers that were sort of ‘hidden’. It can be due to the fact that their minds didn’t realize that the situations were dangerous, like the hazards of moving fan belts of an engine of a car or an air hole (the size on the index finger) on the cover of a rotary feeder. In both cases, the victims cut off part of their index fingers because of being ‘curious’ and used their index fingers to assess the situations. I’m sure there are hundred or even thousands of cases similar in nature are happening every day whether at home or at work.
In Japan, one organization has perfected a method that would reduce the risk of accidents by making the mind to always be on the alert. The method is accepted by the general Japanese public as a responsible act and is now being adopted in almost all organizations and businesses in Japan. Many foreign visitors in Japan found that the Japanese Railways Corporation (JR) is very responsive when providing safety service to commuters. Safety announcements, like all commuters must be behind the yellow line are made on every train arrival, are very clear and a must to alerts commuters of the ‘hidden’ dangers on a moving object. Before the train doors are opened, a JR employee on platform duty will look to his right point his fingers while uttering the words ‘line clear’ and he would repeat the same routine when turning to his left. This act, which is translated as ‘finger point and call (FP&C)’, is not only very important to him and his company but also for the safety of the commuters. The JR is world famous of its good safety record and its employees are proud to show off this act.
The FP&C method is very common in Japanese factories and workshop nowadays. It is an accepted as positive behavior that could reduce the risk of accidents. This act will alert the mind on the presence of the dangers (known or unknown) through the main senses of the human body, like sight, feel, and hearing. When I finger point and call on a situation, such as the moving fan belts of a car engine to look for the source of an abnormal sound, I would say out “Fan belt is moving, ok”; through this act I’m actually alerting my mind by making use of the 3 senses routes to my brain. I’m using the speech part of the brain to say out the words which alerts my mind of the dangers; I’m hearing what is being said which also alerts my mind of the danger; I’m seeing the moving belt by pointing it with my index finger at the moving belt while saying the words also alerts my mind through my sight or vision of the danger. Hence, from these FP&C actions the mind gets informed through 3 routes, thus ensuring it to coordinate a careful judgment and movement of my body and hands when carrying out the work. So its no more a myth when we observed an airline pilot said ‘check’ at every step of his take off routine before taking the plane up in the air.
These simple acts of seeing, hearing, feeling and thinking are frequently not completely used for the benefit of reducing the risks of accidents thus resulting in injuries or fatalities. These acts were taken for granted by these victims; just like we take little notice on all the billboards along the road while driving to work because the impact of these advertisements is insignificance to our daily life. Often accidents with serious injuries happened when the victims didn’t adequately assess the potential hazards by using all these senses in combination to have a good assessment of the working conditions before acting. When analyzing such accidents, one might have the impression that the victims had acted carelessly; if only he would pause a while and gave a thought he might have all ten fingers on both hands rather than three on the right hand.
In this post I’ll elaborate on the accidents prevention by structured prediction of accidents carried out by a working team of 4 to 5 co-workers taking the account of actual near misses experienced by the group members as case studies. The structured prediction of an accident focuses on two causal causes of accident; namely unsafe conditions and unsafe acts. It is customary done through brainstorming to lead the formulation of preventive measures of an imaginary worst scenario or injuries that could result if the accident were to actually take place. The group’s mission is to reduce or entirely eliminate the risk in the job that the near accident had taken place, thus making it safe.
Below are the steps to carrying out the structured prediction of accidents.
STEP 1 – Reenacting the near or minor accident
The leader (a supervisor or the manager of the group) will start with an explanation of the case to be studied. The scenario must reflect the actual near miss that took place and experienced by the members of the group. It would be better for the leader did some home work before presenting, like taking photos or video or an accurate sketch to reenact the incident. Usually the person who experienced the near miss would also tell his/her account of the near accident. The group must be absolutely clear about the case’s scenario. The leader should ask questions to the members of the group to ensure that his team members are clear on what actually had happened. It will take about 10 minutes to complete this step.
STEP 2 – Brainstorm on worst scenario 
Focusing on the 2 attributes, unsafe conditions or circumstances and unsafe acts, as mentioned earlier, the leader will start the brainstorming process of getting as much as probable causes as possible from members. All points should be presented or worded as, first is nature of injury than the event and giving the reason of whether it is due to unsafe condition or unsafe act. It is like playing the dominoes in the reverse direction. This way the group members can visualize and can make assessment of the risks of the unsafe conditions or acts.
It is vitally important for all members not to indulge in argument, as it will distract the flow of the brainstorming process. All probable causes must be recorded by the leader. To make sure that records are organized, it is proper to write the probable causes in two columns, one being unsafe conditions and the other is unsafe acts. If the brainstorming process were to be carried out effectively each column would have 10 probable causes. This step can also be competed in 20 minutes.
Some examples of the most probable causes are;
- Paralysis or serious back injury would happen due slip because of water on stairways. – unsafe condition
- Fatal accident could result due to swinging iron beam because site supervisor fails to cordon the swinging path before carrying out the work. – unsafe act
STEP 3 – Risk assessment
Ok now, the group has 10 probabilities in each column and the leader will moderate the discussion by the members to select 3 most dangerous probable causes in respective column. Having selected 3 out of 10 that are ranked as very dangerous and most imminent hazards in the work that being discussed; the leader must record in order of most risky as the top most of the list followed by the lesser ones. This step should take about 10 minutes.
STEP 4 – Formulating preventive measures and immediate implementation
For each cause that the group has thought off, they must now formulate 3 preventive measures for each cause with the aim bringing down the possibility to zero. So, the goup would have a total of 9 preventive measures. However, to implement 9 preventive measures are some what not realistic, thus it most advisable to select the top 3 measures that have most effect in preventive such recurrence of the accident. The leader has the responsibility to document the preventive measure and then forward his report to his boss and to the safety committee or the safety manager. Finally, the group will say aloud the most important measure as to mark the end of their discussion. This would take about 20 minutes.
The structured prediction method (Kiken Yochi) has allowed the Japanese organizations to move one step ahead of an unforeseen event by treating the ‘symptoms’ rather than ‘curing the disease’. Just like the old saying “prevention is better that cure”. This ‘ritual’ can be as elaborate as what I’ve written that takes about 1 hour of meeting time, but now most seasoned organizations employees are conducting the lighter version which only take about 15 to 20 minutes and are carried out daily before commencement of work.
A typical employee who has worked for 5 years and have done this ‘ritual’ daily would already developed his/her mind to be very quick to respond to any unsafe conditions and acts that he would encounter when carrying out his/her duties. His/her eyes and ears mind would always look for hazards because his/her mind is very developed and capable of identifying the dangers. Further, he/she is also accustomed to act immediately to avoid harm on to his/her body or to his/her fellow workers. He/she is said to have developed an ‘instinct’ to fight against hazards.
To me, the message of the slogan ‘Safety First’ is simply aimed at making safety as the top priority in what ever act that we are about to take or execute; whether the act is going to be diving or answer a call on cell phone while driving or slicing a cucumber with a sharp knife for a dish; it can be anything. Since all of our actions (conscious or unconscious) originated from the brain it would be most effective to have a mental picture (visualization) of the outcome of the acts that are about to be executed. Will the action that I’m going to take produce the result as expected, that is, without injury to me or to others? If the answer is yes; it’d better for me to rewind and play back the mental image and start identify the imminent dangers thinking of how to eliminate them. It’s like when a gymnast perfecting a new difficult and dangerous routine; he/she would take a brief moment to visualize the routine before executing it. However, to most people this preparatory step of executing an acted is seen as a wasted moment and argued that if accidents were to happen they will regardless whether we like it or not. I believe that all accidents can surely be prevented.
Safety management has 3 main goals and in order to be effective safety managers have to perform tremendously difficult task in ensuring that all accidents are prevented from occurring. They are responsible to ensure that;
1. zero loss of life
2. zero injuries
3. zero property damage
Imagine that you are the safety manager of a shipbuilding company where hundreds or may be thousands of people are working with sharp metal edges, welding torches, heavy overhead loads and working in confined spaces. Keeping it an accident free place requires more that asking all workers to wear their safety gears or personal protective equipment. The safety manager is just like a musical orchestra conductor; ensuring every little musical note is just played but played with 
feeling and affection.
In Japan, the notion that in every one fatal accident there were 29 minor injuries cases and 300 near accidents cases is wide spread. Every body is aware of such notion. So, it’s a duty of the safety manager to capture all near misses case in order to prevent injuries from happening. All near misses are analyzed, tagged and kept respective databases. Their counter measures were documented and actions were immediately implemented to prevent recurrence. It is the process that the safety manager must adhere strictly in order to eliminate entirely the possibility of having a fatal case. This can only be effective carried out in organizations where communication is efficient where everybody in the organization knows that the information could be used to prevent a serious accident. It would be near to impossible task in organizations where the ‘infrastructure’ of effective communication is not been developed and the people are unaware about such notion as described earlier.
Can an isolated case of near accident experienced by a welder working alone in one end of the shipbuilding yard be reported to his safety manager? The answer is yes, if the welder were to realize that his experience would one day prevent himself or his co-worker from getting killed. Many of us have the tendency to brush away our near misses experiences or somewhat ashamed to make them public or just don’t think that they are important. Well, we need to be otherwise in order for the organization or the community that we belong to live in an accident free environment.
Have you ever seen in real life on in tv the routine of an airline pilot confirming and verify his/her act before getting the plane to fly? For every switch or button that he/she pushes he/she would confirm by pointing and uttering the word “checked” simultaneously. This act is important to ensure that the pilot is on tract of getting the plane ready for take off. It’s one way to remind our brain through the eyes and ears that the action was successfully taken and it’s ok to execute the next step of the process. If this routine is effective for pilots, it would also have the same effect for us to copy like, before crossing a street or before preparing coffee in a pantry. Others who are ignorant of its effectiveness to prevent accidents would regard the act as silly and would find it’s an awkward act to imitate. Think it this way, is it silly for us the copy if we could avoid ourselves or friends from getting killed or paralyzed? I’m sure you have a good answer for that.
An unsafe workplace is one that contributes many problems in any business environment. The problems that surface out from an unsafe workplace include; loss time, defective products or services quality, temporary loss of skill, additional cost and higher turnover rate of employees. The combination these problems will sum up to produce a major impact to reducing your customers’ confidence level towards the business. If your business efficiency is on the reducing trend, my suggestion for you is to start acting in making your business premise (offices, factories, workshops, machines, warehouses, vehicles, tables and servers) a safe and secure place. Money doesn’t have eyes but one thing for sure; that you will drive it away when it ‘sees’ that your workplace is an unsafe one.
We just cannot afford to lose our business money unnecessarily in the present economic conditions. As the crude oil price escalating unstoppably, money is a scarce commodity now, thus prompting many businesses to take actions towards reducing cost; which if taken wrongly would be disastrous the business. Businesses that were established in the post second oil shock period (from 1987) are most venerable compared to those businesses that survived the 1st (1974 to 
1979) and 2nd (1980 to 1986) oil shocks in the present economic situation.
As I came from a Japanese corporation that had gone through these hard times in world business history, I’ve the firsthand knowledge on how did the company sustained harsh effects of sudden increase in oil price; (I was employed in 1976 and took an early retirement in 2000). So, one may ask; what has the price of oil has to do with a safe workplace? The answer is simply, money. With a safe working place you won’t be having the problems as listed earlier and thus can channel your business money for better uses.
