Poor Safety | Lost Opportunity

Sponsored Links

Safety is the buzzword across all platforms of industry. However, I thought I would share a story of how poor safety can lead to lost opportunities. Years ago, I was working at a reasonable size aerospace company. The company made sophisticated parts for the aircraft engine industry – we dealt everyday with parts made of exotic materials including titanium, nickel-base superalloys, cobalt-base superalloys and the like. Our quality was excellent and we slowly got inquiries to do some non-aerospace work. The manufacturing floor was clean, well-organized and generally spic and span giving us a fantastic work environment.

Business was booming and the new president of our company decided he needed a smaller operation outside the main plant to do small non-aerospace work. He had me look into potential small machine shops within a reasonable radius that he could potentially purchase through an business acquisition, so he could have complete control of the satellite plant’s operation. I went through and made a list of all the machine shops within a five mile radius of the main plant. Most of them did not fit the needs that we were looking for. Then it struck me – we had been outsourcing a lot of the fixture-making and sundry work to a small shop that was within 3 miles of our plant – we had been doing business with them for years and years and so I suggested their name to my boss. He had never visited them before and neither had I. So we fixed an appointment with the owner and proceeded to meet with him at his location one day.

That was a shocking sight to me who was used to working in a clean manufacturing environment. The driveway itself was unpaved with ups and downs and potholes and craters. My boss looked at me and said, “Forget it, I am not going in there; the deal is off.” I pleaded with him to at least come in and spend a little time and then decide whatever; reminded him not to judge the outside appearance. Internally, I had a feeling my boss was probably going to be right. He accepted my request and we went in.

The shop was dimly lit and one out of every three lights needed new bulbs. Talk about the cardinal principle of industrial safety – the workplace needs to be well lit. The manufacturing shop floor was all cluttered – old fixtures on the floor with no tags or labels; bars of material that looked like steel – again no tags or labels as what alloy they were – were they stainless or mild steel or medium carbon steel or some other alloy – nobody knew by looking at it. There were some buckets on the sides of the machines some of them half filled with some liquid that looked like machining oil; we walked a little more and there were some 55 gallon drums – again, no labels – nobody could tell whether they were hazardous waste or virgin material and then again what were they – lubricating oils or machining coolants or what. The shop was smoky with hardly any ventilation with an old fan barely turning and simply wasting electricity in my opinion. There were a few desks here and there and they were all piled with clutter and paper and blueprints and some old parts that were being used as paper weights We walked a little more and we found an operator cleaning some parts by dipping in a can – the area smelt like acetone and believe it or not the operator was smoking a cigarette with loud music in the background. I said to myself, “this is a disaster waiting to happen – smoking around a flammable is a definite problem.” I kind of agreed with my boss that in this case the outside did represent the inside. He politely told the owner that he would not be interested in acquiring this facility and we went back to our plant – “what a pleasant workplace to return to”, I thought.

The owner of that small shop lost the opportunity to sell his business to a prospective buyer simply because he was maintaining a cluttered work environment that was full of safety hazards. There were several accidents waiting to happen. Later, I told him politely to organize his shop and improve his safety procedures so may be next time someone comes to buy him out, he has a chance to succeed.