Illinois Auto Electric Co. Saves $289,000 and Cuts OSHA Recordables By 59% With ESS
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The Challenge
- Achieve OSHA compliance for 11 entities over 4 divisions.
- Manage consistent data in root cause analysis format.
- Reduce OSHA recordable incidents.
The Solution
- Compliance Suite™
Safety Management Software - Compliance Suite™
MSDS Management Software
Also licensed:
- Compliance Suite™ Job Hazard Analysis Management Software
The Results
- Achieved OSHA compliance with easily accessible and accurate data.
- Saved $289,000 in workers compensation premiums over a 3-year period.
- Reduced OSHA recordable rate by 59% in just 2 years.
- Lost time incidents dropped from 11 to only 4.
- Decreased insurance premiums and experience modification rate from 1.87 in 2005 to 1.33 in 2007.
It began as a small automobile repair shop on the south side of Chicago. Today, the Illinois Auto Electric Company (IAE) is one of the largest independent sales and service facilities in the U.S. The company specializes in providing quality transportation and industrial equipment, and is one of America's biggest distributors of outdoor care products. IAE prides itself on a commitment to excellence and innovative thinking. But maintaining excellence requires a safe working environment for employees, so IAE uses ESS software to support archiving and its safety management program by tracking, recording and managing all of the company's safety management data.
The seminal idea to use ESS software was Craig Wagner's, director of EHS and workers' compensation at IAE. IAE utilizes ESS' Compliance Suite Safety Management Software along with Compliance Suite MSDS Management Software to track accidents and behaviors for 250 personnel across four divisions and 11 different entities. Building upon that management practice, they recently added Compliance Suite Job Hazard Analysis Management Software for improving safety gaps through internal audits. "Compliance Suite gives you an element of being able to analyze an accident in pretty deep detail," says Wagner.
Wagner is responsible for risk management throughout the entire enterprise and he uses ESS' Compliance Suite software to maintain compliance with Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA) regulations. His goal is to change the behavior of IAE employees who may adopt unsafe habits. "Behavioral safety modification is the name of the game, trying to get people to do what they need to do at work or home," says Wagner. "Other software programs don't enable that element of behavioral safety. Being able to analyze what happened, who's responsible, and what procedures weren't followed is valuable to our organization."
Before Wagner arrived, IAE had difficulty keeping detailed records of safety management and OSHA compliance data. They used a combination of paper process and electronic data management. Though ESS software had been implemented since 1997, the system had not been used to its full capacity. "When I first got here in September 2006, nobody really paid attention to these things," Wagner said. "They didn't really know how people got hurt, or the root cause. We needed to change our viewpoint and discover what we could do to make sure that people didn't repeat the same actions or habits. We had the technology in house already; I just expanded on its capability."
With Safety Management Software, IAE can track all OSHA recordable incidents, including accidents, first aids, near-misses and injuries, in a format that allows in-depth analysis of incident causes. The system's detailed data management capabilities lets users track OSHA compliance and organize statistics based on any number of criteria. "In just a couple of clicks, I can track incidents by body parts, by departments, by equipment used and more. I can see who the supervisor was, determine if a material safety data sheet exist for reviews and I can see all the actions that happened on any shift at any location," Wagner said.
ESS' Safety Management module comes fully integrated with more than 30 pre-loaded reports and graphs. Organizations can avoid fines and maximize workplace safety with the system's comprehensive cost-tracking analysis and detailed OSHA recordkeeping capacity.
ESS' MSDS Management module works with the Safety Management module, and eliminates the annoyance of Material Safety Data Sheet storage, lost data files, tedious and redundant data entry and performing constant updates to current records. Long laborious searches through file cabinets and binders can be replaced with a few quick mouse clicks.
"With paper and pencil, I didn't have the ability to really track procedures that needed to be implemented. The ESS system allows me to keep track of so much information. More than I could keep in my head on a given day," Wagner said.
In 2006, IAE experienced a total of 11 lost-time incidents. In just a year, that number decreased to four. The company has also seen a significant drop in OSHA recordables. In 2006, the company recorded a total of 27; by 2007, that number had decreased by more than half.
The ease of use and detailed data management capabilities of ESS software have also saved the company a great deal of money in workers' compensation fees. "In 2005, IAE spent over $568,000 in workers' compensation premiums. In 2006, the company cut those costs by $167,000. That's a savings of almost 40 percent," reported Wagner. In 2007, they saved another $53,000 and in 2008, they are enjoying additional savings of $69,000. Over a 3-year period, IAE saved a total of $289,000. Insurance premiums are falling as well as the company's experience modification rate (EMR). The EMR dropped from 1.87 in 2005 to 1.33 in 2007.
"When you can start to quantify your concerns, then you can start to prove the existence of problems that might otherwise be left unresolved," Wagner said. "You can say, 'here's what the safety problems are and here's how we can fix them.' When you can do that, then you can control the destiny of a company's safety performance. And now, this company is really good at that thanks to ESS technology."
