Cultural Change Through Technology Innovations
Posted on 13 April 2021

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The raw potential of new technology is astonishing, from IoT, to blockchains, data lakes, and AI. Although it is getting easier to use many of these, it is incredibly difficult to understand how any particular technology leads to transformational opportunities. In particular, it is difficult to adapt the technology to the unique needs of the organisation and to integrate it with current processes.

To further complicate matters, most enterprises have ingrained legacy systems that are difficult to modify. One can only solve these problems with individuals with technical depth, scope, and the ability to work hand-in-hand with the wider organisation.

The reality is that in many industries today, most data is not up to basic standards, and the rigours of change require far better data quality and analytics.

Data poses a fascinating paradox; transformation involves understanding emerging types of unstructured data, huge quantities of data external to the business, leveraging and incorporating proprietary data, all while shedding massive amounts of information that has never been (and will never be) used.

 

 

THE BUSINESS CASE

Today technology can help by allowing businesses to capture data on Environment, Health & Safety, it’s not just about incidents. Leading indicators against a predefined set of requirements, using intuitive online and offline protocols, are already as important as the lagging indicators. This helps to collate information in a predefined manner that is compliant and importantly, drives continual EHS improvement and culture change.

Once the data is obtained, it is important to act on it. Technology enables businesses to respond to such cases within predefined parameters to a satisfactory close. Furthermore, comprehensive EHS and compliance software systems provide organisations with a central location for consistent logging of events, assigning corrective measures, analysing root causes and reporting on incident rates.

Many organisations are leveraging the use of dedicated and integrated iOS and Android incident management mobile apps to enhance EHS management and reporting by allowing employees to record findings or incident reports on the go. Apps can also have offline support in case the user is not online; tasks and activities can be inserted and completed on the move, and information synchronised to the cloud at a later stage.

 

A CASE STUDY

Sandvik has over 43,000 employees across the globe. Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions (SMR) division has eight product areas: rotary drilling, load and haul, mechanical cutting, parts and services, rock tools, rock drills and technologies, surface drilling and exploration, and underground drilling.

We now look at how Sandvik Mining and Rock Solutions innovated its entire approach with Culture-Changing EHS Reporting.

 

THE CHALLANGES

In 2006, SMR introduced EHS reporting using spreadsheets for the capture and communication of EHS data.

Over time, the reporting needs of SMR have become more complicated. SMR’s EHS goal is to continually improve both its EHS culture and its management systems.

SMR recognised that it needed to use its reporting not only to track outcomes, but also to allow a wider, more holistic view of data to ensure greater transparency, promote good decision-making, and recognise key areas for change and investment.

In order to retain its market-leading position, SMR pursued a path that would allow it to assess behavioural change by reporting both quantitative and qualitative data.

With this strategy, the goal was to translate data into information to strengthen the value of EHS across the enterprise, to build and implement a culture of EHS awareness, and to enable staff to take ownership of EHS on an individual basis.

 

 

THE SOLUTION

SMR opted to go with SAI Global’s SAI360 platform and has achieved what it aims to do: significantly improve it’s EHS performance by simultaneously improving both the management systems and the EHS culture.

The numbers support this belief – 88% of employees rated the EHS culture as strong or very strong in their last employee survey. Looking at the lagging safety indicators, in the years after the solution was implemented, the Total Recordable Injury Frequency Rate fell from 19.6 to 2.7 at the end of February 2021 and the Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate is now at 0.67.

But that’s not all; with greater openness and a common sense of the importance of EHS success, the atmosphere is different, and workers take on individual ownership and accountability.

SMR has also used SAI360 for EHS to generate EHS League Tables, which places a focus on several Leading Indicators of EHS performance in areas where it was identified that some behavioural change was needed.

 

 

• Close-out rates have risen from 59% to a consistent 98%, whereas the number of hazards identified due to a significantly improved safety culture has increased by 200% over the same era.

• The annual site-based completion rate of the EHS plan is now is above 98% for all sites. Before, they had not been finished in time or had been completed by the end of the year.

• Reporting Performance (within allocated time-frames) has improved with the average monthly score increasing from 9.2 (of possible 20) in 2015 to 16.5 in 2020 – this is an 80% increase in performance.

• Every location has established a Health & Wellbeing Program that has been developed in consultation with the workforce. The Health & Wellbeing programs are made up of approximately 362 separate elements for 2021 (an element is an individual topic within the program) under the classification of either physical, psychosocial, social, economic, spiritual and personal development. These programs are declared, monitored and progressed in a systematic manner using the platform’s functionality.

 

 

CONCLUSION – PACKING IT ALL UP

There is far more to consider than the financial bottom line in today’s cut-throat business world. As well as generating revenue, companies must be able to demonstrate to all of its stakeholders (e.g. investors, customers, regulators, local communities) that it has the capability to meet all expectations associated with having a “social license to operate”.

Collecting, managing, reporting and analysing data is a vital part of every EHS Management System. Human error will never go away, and there will always be an inherent risk of failures in equipment and procedures. That said, a comprehensive and efficient data management system will arguably be one of the most important ways to develop prevention strategies.

To address all these challenges, many companies are searching for digital technologies that enable them to evolve from manual spread sheet-based processes to a fully integrated EHS solution expanding their capabilities.

As highlighted in Sandvik’s case above, technologies such as the one from SAI Global can help EHS experts significantly improve worker safety and incident management by optimising the system to change the culture.

Furthermore, with greater transparency and a shared understanding of the value of EHS performance, a local EHS culture will improve by supporting individuals in taking greater ownership and accountability for the risks and controls in their workplace.

 

ABOUT SAI GLOBAL

SAI Global helps risk and compliance professionals proactively manage risk to create trust and achieve business excellence, growth and sustainability for their organizations.

SAI360, our world-leading Risk platform, is the most complete integrated approach to risk management on the market including compliance management, enterprise & operational risk management, EHS & operational excellence, ethics & compliance learning and digital risk & business continuity use cases. Combining market-leading software capabilities, learning content and
controls, SAI360 provides a line of sight to navigate risk and compliance management by addressing it from every perspective.

SAI Global is headquartered in Chicago, U.S., and operates across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Pacific. Discover more on our website or follow us on LinkedIn. To see SAI360 in action, request a demo.

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Francois Germain

Francois Germain holds a Masters’ degree in General Engineering. His career spans power generation, chemicals, refining and offshore. In 2014 he joined Total Refining and Chemicals as VP Health & Safety where he leads global Safety Culture transformation programs for several Business Unit’s within Total. Francois is now leading Digital Innovation within Total Refining and Chemicals

Ron Wissenburg

Ron his main experience is redesigning and implementation of the changes in supply chain processes and organization by leveraging IT solutions. He started his career in consulting at Deloitte where he supported business transformations with SAP in various industries. He Joined Alstom Power in March 2010 which in 2016 Alstom became General E. At Alstom/GE he had various IT leadership roles and the past 3 years he has been working on driving Digital Technology programs within Quality and EHS for Gas Power.

Pierluigi Petrali

Pierluigi Petrali has been working Whirlpool Europe since 1989. He started his career in Information Technology, working at introduction in Whirlpool of CIM, MES and Fault Tolerant Networks. He has then worked in innovation projects, contributing to the spread and growth of TRIZ methodology in Italy and Europe and to the development of product/process design support approaches. Presently he coordinates manufacturing research and development activities for EMEA region. Directly involved as technical and main partner in more than 10 funded research projects under FP7 and H2020 program in the last five years, he’s currently working in definition and implementation of Whirlpool Industry 4.0 strategy. He’s the inventor of five patents and author several technical papers and public speech on TRIZ, Technology Forecasting, Manufacturing Quality, Internet of Things and Industry 4.0.

Henrik Fransson

Henrik Fransson is a Swedish manager with an aeronautics and computer science background working for Airbus in Hamburg, where he has held various management positions. He is passionate about finding new ways of working and influencing the lives of others by making their daily life easier.

“Use my data to serve me, do it wisely and with care”

Bjoern Neal Kirchner

Bjoern Neal Kirchner, a graduated economist from Munich and London universities, has almost 20 years’ experience in logistics and supply chain management at senior level. Shifting twice between China and Europe, he has worked in 5 countries moving along the entire supply chain. He gained experience in emerging markets and led teams through challenging SAP-implementations and post-merger integration projects. With the focus on building high performance teams, Bjoern has been engaged in various business process optimization and organizational transformation projects. Currently, he is leading the Global Supply Chain team in Amsterdam for Adhesive Technologies of HENKEL.

Stefan Schrauf

Dynamic, self motivated and results-oriented cross-cultural team player with a proven track record of digital operations and supply chain strategy, excellence and transformations across several industries including industrial products, automotive, consumer goods and chemicals.

Dr. Stefan Kluge

• Education: Chemistry, Information Technology, General and Environmental Law, Toxicology
• Companies: DASA, General Electric Capital/ BMW, Siemens, Infineon, Intel
• Functions: R&D, Systems Engineering, Factory Automation, Strategic Planning, Manufacturing Strategy, Business Planning, Outsourcing Strategy, Supplier Development, External Manufacturing Management
• Currently: Sr. Director Operations & Systems Enabling, Corporate Planning Group, Intel

Toni Sirviö

Mr. Toni Sirviö has been working at Konecranes Plc. since 2005 with various responsibilities within Sales development, Commercial Excellence and Supply Chain Management including Project Management, Global Order Management, Pricing, Planning and ERP Tool process and conceptual development/deployment. Mr. Sirviö has also been working in the Commercial Excellence program as a project director for the sales lead development process.

Håvard Jörgensen

Håvard Jörgensen is in his role as VP Group Supply chain in Electrolux, leading the work on the strategic direction and plans for the Electrolux supply chain. Specific focus on SC Resilience, digital development, E2E SC integration, SC Sustainability, processes and capabilities. He has +20 years of experience within Supply Chain and Operations from various leadership roles in Procter & Gamble, Arla Foods and Coca-Cola European Partners.

Sean Garoghan

An experienced and results orientated Sustainability and Compliance senior manager with a background of 10 years working within the service and energy sector with strong leadership and people management skills and specialising in Sustainability and Compliance. A professional buyer with a wealth of experience in stakeholder management and developing supplier compliance frameworks. Pro-efficiently experienced in various procurement and supplier systems such as; ORACLE 11i & R12, SAP, Proactis and Avetta. Experienced within all Microsoft and Google packages, highly proficient in Excel and highly experienced in data analysis and commercial intelligence with extensive knowledge within OHSAS and ISO audits and accreditation's and CDM regulations.

Vera Bartsch

Vera Bartsch is the Sustainability Manager for UPM Raflatac’s EMEIA region. She leads the self-adhesive label company’s sustainability efforts in the market. Vera’s activities include providing expert sustainability consultancy for sales, stakeholder and partnership development, management of eco-design, life cycle assessment with UPM Raflatac’s Label Life tool, recycling of label waste through the company’s RafCycle program as well as sustainability marketing and communications.

Vera has a background in sales of label material with regards to sustainability in Central Europe, working with both label printers and brand owners. She coordinates the cooperation with other UPM business units for UPM Raflatac and has worked on several international projects for the development of UPM Raflatac.

Rebekah Bell

Rebekah currently serves as the Work Management & Planning Manager for Southern Company’s Fleet Performance & Reliability organization. Rebekah was the leader in the integration and implementation of CiM Visual Planner for daily work scheduling and has spent the last seven years of her career as a subject matter expert on work management, maintenance strategy, and process improvement across the Southern Company fossil, hydro, and renewables fleet. Rebekah began her career with Southern Company in 2006, and over the last 16 years Rebekah has served in a variety of maintenance roles, including experience additionally in contractor relations, fleet outage optimization, and reporting and analytics.

Rebekah holds a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from the University of South Alabama and a Master of Engineering in Construction Engineering Management from the University of Alabama at Birmingham. She is the proud mother of Kimberly Grace, 17.

Harald Kirsch

Dynamic, entrepreneurial business strategist with over 30 years of professional experience in organizational and business development in the segments of Digital Transformation, IIoT, Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Security, automation of enterprise processes, sales of innovative SW solutions and services, portfolio management, consulting, system integration services, outsourcing as well as business transformation, change management, product management and product development.

Jean Charbonneau

Mr. Jean Charbonneau is a renowned worldwide speaker with over 30 years of experience in asset reliability and a leading influencer on the best methods for asset intensive organizations to achieve maintenance excellence. He founded the Maintenance Excellence Group in 1997, putting together a team of asset reliability experts to assist organizations with maximizing their production output while minimizing asset maintenance costs. MEG’s flagship solution, the Visual Planner Digital Platform, is used by over 10,000 maintenance professionals from all industrial sectors worldwide, allowing them to execute the right maintenance, at the right time, at the lowest costs.

Rachel Cooke

I am a technical leader with over 15 years of experience in global operations in food and drink and logistics. I have held a range of supply chain roles including engineering, manufacturing, purchasing and project management.

I currently lead Reliability Engineering for Amazon Europe, which includes robotics, reliability programs, learning and information services, predictive analytics (machine learning), computerized maintenance management systems, new technology introduction and new site launches. Previously, I was Head of Central Programs and Capability for Amazon Engineering Services Europe, where I led several teams that supported the growth of Amazon's warehousing capacity. Prior to this I was responsible for manufacturing performance measurement and operational excellence for SABMiller (FTSE-10), who were the world’s second largest brewer by volume with over 100 operations worldwide in Africa, Asia Pacific, Europe, Latin America and the USA. Before this I led a team delivering a portfolio of product change initiatives from project initiation through to implementation and launch at Cadbury. I have spent three years living in Poland, where I worked on the design, construction and commissioning of two new-build confectionery factories.