At JSR Corporation, safety is our highest priority and the foundation of all of our activities.
Accordingly, we will create safe worksites and strive to maintain physical and mental health, with the goal of ensuring a safe return home at the end of each workday.
We are moving toward becoming a mutually enlightened organization in terms of (1) extremely safe behavior, (2) enhanced human resources and organizational strength, and (3) optimal risk management and security measures as a vision of where we want to be in FY2020.
The Basic Philosophy for Occupational Health and Safety has penetrated through the organization, the Courses of Action are established as applying to everyone, and safety competency is improving through independent safety activities.
High personal skills, organizational ability, and a healthy organizational culture are being maintained with the establishment and execution of the education and training programs needed for organizational management.
Security measures corresponding to risk importance are being efficiently and effectively implemented using new technologies.
* Regular activity verifications (by JSR and third parties) will be conducted to confirm progress toward fulfilling the vision.
Notes:
Reactive: No action unless an accident happens; response by instinct
Dependent: Management by a supervisor/safety officer; doing what one is told to do
Independent: Action on a personal level; ability to act alone without being told
Interdependent: Working on colleagues; mutual awareness with colleagues)
(Source: DuPont)
In FY2017, we efficiently operated the safety foundation we have developed heretofore and worked to improve our safety technologies. We also strengthened our activities in process safety. As for our safety culture, we focused on initiatives for passing on technologies from older to younger workers and building risk recognition, and continued our efforts to spread safety-related values among our employees. We intend to continue these activities and verify their effects in FY2018.
We unfailingly promote independent safety activities as part of our approach to process safety and workplace safety. One important basis for these activities is risk assessment.
Using multiple risk assessment methods to ensure completeness, we identify serious risks and execute both infrastructure- and human-based countermeasures to deal with them.
We reexamined the number of people needed in each manufacturing section, split organizations so that managers can fully grasp what is happening within them, and expanded staffs. We are now seeing improved workplace communication and other benefits as a result. We will continue ascertaining the effects of this organizational review and also look at how functions and roles are shared with other concerned departments.
The Educational System (Conceptual Image)
We have set desired levels for ranks of the job hierarchy and are striving to provide HR education that allows employees to reliably achieve those levels. We are also conducting assessments of individual employees' ability to operate specific equipment items and processes as well as their comprehensive abilities, and using them to maintain and improve organizational strength.
Because "safety culture" differs greatly depending on the company, business location, or workplace, it is important for organizations to accurately grasp their own safety culture level when building it. To periodically monitor the safety culture level of each workplace, we prepared a safety culture questionnaire based on eight safety culture axes and began using it primarily in manufacturing-related departments. In FY2017, we acted to improve the precision of our safety culture maturity evaluations by having an outside organization conduct a third-party evaluation and then comparing the results to results of our own questionnaire. We will continue improving and evaluating this questionnaire so that we may ascertain strengths and weaknesses at the company, business location, and workplace levels and tie what we learn to the building of our safety culture.
Organizational safety culture "8 axes"
The Safety and Health Activity Forum is a JSR Group initiative at which all business establishments of the Group present exemplary safety and health activities. Its objectives are to improve employees' safety awareness and to raise the quality of safety and health activities. Each year, we select presentation themes after conducting a careful screening of examples of safety activities that were nominated by each establishment.
The FY2017 forum was held on July 21, "Safety Day." The following presentations were made. After the presentations, a panel discussion was held by the presenters and became the scene of a lively discussion on "eradicating unsafe behaviors."
Presenting group | Title | Content |
---|---|---|
Yokkaichi Plant Development Dept. |
Cultivating and Strengthening Safety Activities | As sections with many changes or irregular operations grapple with personnel turnovers and generational transition, the department is creating mechanisms for passing on the knowledge, experience, and tacit knowledge of older workers to younger ones.
(1) Mutual KYK with other groups to permit hazard identification from various perspectives (2) Onsite hands-on training with traps using pilot equipment to build recognition and understanding of equipment and process anomalies |
Chiba Plant Environmental Safety Dept. |
Reducing Risks in the Chiba Plant's Disaster Response | Whenever public firefighters arrive at the plant, they require information to conduct firefighting (e.g., the fire's location, incendiary substances, nearby combustible materials, firefighting methods, etc.). However, the existing system was unable to accurately and quickly provide this information, in part due to a lack of experience, which caused anxiety in the department. For this reason, the department devised a system that can retrieve and print out information to be provided to firefighters (e.g., facilities, used and stored chemicals, chemical characteristics, firefighting methods, etc.) by clicking on the area on a screen. This allows those in charge to respond precisely and promptly to firefighters' requirements (i.e., by preparing the information they need upon arrival when a fire occurs) with peace of mind. |
Kashima Plant Manufacturing Dept. |
Safety Activities for Improving Emergency Response Capability and Safety Awareness | Under the department's youth-centered operations scheme, whereby everyone except for team leaders is under 30, there were worries about employees' ability to responding to emergencies. To address these worries, the department is providing blind quick-response training with focus on the following points to improve response capabilities.
(1) Training on gathering information, making appropriate decisions, and taking initial actions based on gas detection reports and other alarms alone. |
Yokkaichi Plant Testing Dept. | Department-Wide Safety Promotion Activities | In an environment in which there are many section employees, evaluation offices are dispersed, and shift work takes place, managers have difficulty keeping an eye on everything. This makes it necessary to ensure safety by improving individual employees' safety awareness and promoting integrated safety activities. The Testing Department is tackling this need by augmenting managers' top-down activities with action centered on safety leaders who have a strong understanding of operations and personnel and using it to stimulate bottom-up solutions. |
Yokkaichi Plant Manufacturing Dept. | Focusing on Safety following a Major Workplace Accident | Ever since in a major workplace accident occurred in 2014, JSR has been implementing a number of infrastructure and human-based safety measures. What has been the mindset of department members as they implemented those measures in the wake of the accident? The department reported on how its members' thinking has changed and remaining issues. |
As listed in the following table of the number of workplace accidents that occurred over the last five years, there were two accidents at JSR, one accident at a Group company (in Japan), and four accidents at manufacturing partners in FY2017. The two accidents at JSR involved young employees and veteran employees, and therefore we will strengthen efforts that are matched to the characteristics of particular age groups. Meanwhile, workplace accidents associated with construction have occurred at JSR's manufacturing partners. We will tackle this problem by reinforcing collaboration with our partners and continuing effective activities. And, just as in Japan, accidents involving tripping, falling, entanglement with operating equipment, and other mishaps are occurring at overseas Group companies. We will continue providing assistance to rectify this situation.
Information on workplace and facility accidents that occurred at JSR is quickly and effectively communicated to all employees via the company intranet. This ensures that all group companies and employees share and understand the information, which helps prevent occurrence of similar accidents in the future.
FY | 2012* | 2013* | 2014* | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Number of Cases | 0 | 3 | 1 (Fatal accident) |
1 | 0 | 2 |
* Figures for 2012 to 2014 are fiscal year figures.
FY | 2012* | 2013* | 2014* | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Number of Cases | 0 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 0 |
* Figures for 2012 to 2014 are fiscal year figures.
FY | 2012* | 2013* | 2014* | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Number of Cases | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 4 |
* Figures for 2012 to 2014 are fiscal year figures.
Lost time accidents rate = (Number of victim in fatal or lost-time accidents/extended working hours) X 1 million
* Figures for 2010 to 2014 are fiscal year frequencies.
As listed in the following table, the number of facility accidents at JSR in FY2017 was two and the number at Group companies was one. This information is reported to the government in compliance with the Act on the Prevention of Disaster in Petroleum Industrial Complexes and Other Petroleum Facilities.
FY | 2012* | 2013* | 2014* | 2015* | 2016 | 2017 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Number of Cases | 2 | 2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 |
* Figures for 2012 to 2015 are fiscal year figures.
FY | 2012* | 2013* | 2014* | 2015* | 2016 | 2017 |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Number of Cases | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
* Figures for 2012 to 2015 are fiscal year figures.
(1) March 3: Butadiene gas leaked from raw material piping at JSR's Yokkaichi Plant. The leak was caused by pipe corrosion. Corrosion management was strengthened and measures to prevent recurrence were implemented.
(2) April 20: Smoke was emitted from waste resin that was stored in the waste yard of JSR's Chiba Plant. The main cause was poor observance of storage rules. Steps to prevent recurrence were implemented, including reinforcement of education on principles and general rules as well as thorough observance of rules.
(3) July 26: Raw material leaked from a tank used in resin manufacture at Techno Polymer (no Techno UMG's Yokkaichi Plant). The main cause was poor observance of facility management rules. Steps were taken to achieve thorough observance of the rules and prevent recurrence.
Like information on workplace accidents, information on facility accidents that occurred at JSR is quickly and effectively communicated to all employees via the company intranet. The information is also used in cause analysis and the results are applied to education. Through these actions, JSR is endeavoring to prevent occurrence of similar accidents in the future.