Driving Sustainability to Business Success: The DS FactorManagement System Integration and Automation

CHAPTER 8 Principles for Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems

All business employers, from the chief executive officers through to first-level supervisors, are responsible for providing a safe and healthy workplace.

This is undertaken by identifying, assessing, and controlling the hazards in the workplace, thus reducing, eliminating, or minimizing the potential for injury, ill health, or loss of life. Whether it is failure to protect your workers against slipping or falling, chemical and gas exposure, electrocution, transportation accidents, ergonomic injuries, communicable diseases (flu, colds), hearing loss, or workplace violence, these hazards can disrupt work and may pose a serious threat to workers, resulting in lost time or loss of life.

The United States Department of Labor outlines the 10 most frequently cited standards following inspections of worksites.¹ In 2012 the following were cited: fall protection, construction; hazard communication; scaffolding; respiratory protection; control of hazardous energy (lockout/tagout); powered industrial trucks; electrical, wiring methods, components, and equipment; ladders, construction; machines-general requirements and machine guarding; electrical systems design, general requirements. Have your supervisor review these areas in your company to address them before OSHA shows up.

Health and Safety Executive Statistics² for 2011 to 2012 for Britain showed a rate of fatal injury of 0.6 for every 100,000 workers. The main ...