When You Know Safety, You Can Realize No Incidents

Indianapolis Small Packaging Facility Reaches 3,650 Days Without a Lost Time Incident

On July 11, the Indianapolis Small Packaging facility reached 3,650 days without a lost time incident. To celebrate this milestone achievement and team’s unwavering commitment, a safety celebration was held at the facility on August 3 and 4.

Over the last ten years, the facility has risen to the safety challenge by applying a relentless focus on finding and fixing hazards, addressing risk, and building a strong culture of safety. Employees have invested themselves in taking the appropriate actions to create a culture of teamwork and enthusiasm for corrective and preventative actions. By providing a full circle approach to safety and health, with programs that include ergonomic training, behavior-based safety coaching, and wellness initiatives that target the issues affecting employees, the continued efforts have created a culture where safety is the most important aspect of the business. Without our employees, servicing our customers is impossible.

“Our facility is a no compromise facility. It’s important and required that safety issues are documented and addressed without fail. Problems and behaviors can never be ignored,” states plant manager Ken Muncy who joined the leadership team in 2011. “We’ve come leaps and bounds since 2011. Our safety progress has been achievable and sustained by knowing what safety means.”

As Indianapolis has shown over the past ten years, when you know safety, you can realize no incidents. The formula for success in Indianapolis has included:

• Training new hires on safety policies, day one.
• Including all new hires in a safety committee meeting immediately on hire.
• Appointing a passionate safety point person, who is given authority and latitude to “Manage Up”.
• Investing in growth, development, and OSHA training of the facility’s appointed safety point person.
• Unwavering management support.
• Documenting and addressing all safety issues without fail.
• Conducting regular management walk throughs that result in the amplification of safety and production concerns communicated through casual conversation.
• Engaging the entire workforce to develop action plans.
• Stopping production immediately if a significant issue is escalated.
• The belief that housekeeping and safety hold hands and that you cannot have one without the other.
  • Aisles must be clean and clearly marked as “safe zones” separating pedestrians from motorized traffic.
  • Constant communication on housekeeping issues, audit/observations, and direction on cleanup tasks to keep work areas safe.
• Formal safety audits that generate work orders.
• Consulting with internal and external safety networks so that safety is not internalize. Indy works closely with safety management outside of the facility to ensure that the best information is readily available to make decisions and to continue to improve when issues arise.

“2021 has been an extremely challenging year for many reasons. Indy employees have worked through all of the distractions and keep supporting our safety initiative and goals with great enthusiasm. I am confident that the team’s efforts will continue throughout 2021 and look forward to surpassing another milestone next year,” said Mark Burgess, President and CEO.

Thank you to the entire Indianapolis team for making safety a priority and keep up the good work!