Has your company implemented Lean or Ergonomics? Or, is your company more forward thinking and knew that both systems are best done in tandem and tried to implement them at the same time? How successful have you been?
Last week I presented the first 5 reasons of my Top 10 list for why ergonomics (and lean) programs failure. Here are the next five:
“We started off well but things have fallen by the wayside”. “Employees were trained, they were enthusiastic and then things just started slipping away…” The previous two statements are ones I’ve heard from companies who wanted to do ergonomics that then proceeded to get a program together and implemented who currently find themselves with a program “in name only”. Common reasons given for demise of the program were that other priorities came up that took precedence or people just got tired of doing it. There can be numerous reasons given for program failure but with a closer look can b
Patient falls in healthcare settings has long been a problem that despite many attempts to solve still continues to happen all too frequently. The solution most hospitals and long term care facililities have implemented in recent years are bed and chair alarms.
There recently was a short article in the Minneapolis Star Tribune in which a nursing home was cited for neglect in a resident’s death. In reading the information contained in the article I think a better, more accurate way to state the problem instead of neglect would have been to cite the nursing home for a breakdown in their resident care system. I see a lack of a systems approach using human factors for resident care. For if one was in place the death of the resident could have been prevented.
Are you involved in running a business or “program” within a business such as Lean, Ergonomics, Process Improvement, Safety, Quality, Operations, …you get the idea? If so, what is your goal? Often I hear people say something similar to the following, “I want an effective and sustainable fill-in-the-blank program”.
Over the remainder of the year I’m going to blog about some of the lessons I’ve learned through the years through practicing, facilitating and consulting on ergonomics, lean and process improvement. Today is the first blog in this series on “Lessons Learned”.
If the CEO came to your office and asked, “How is effective is our ergonomics program today?” what would be your answer? Would you even be able to answer? What would your answer be based on? What metric or measure would you base it upon?
Often times we measure ergonomics and safety success based only on the numbers and costs related to worker injury. Those numbers, whether are good or bad, do matter, but they only matter for yesterday. They don’t tell you what is going on today.
Have you looked at you job description lately? How about your performance evaluation? What performance expectations or knowledge base is required? Does any of it relate to ergonomics or safety? What about everyone else who works for the same company that you do? Do any of their performance expectations or knowledge include ergonomics or safety?
