How Does a Manufacturing Plant Stay Continually Safe? Yeosu Shows the Way!

Ensuring the safety of every employee at the workplace is the uppermost priority of every management team at each of our manufacturing sites. This is no different at Birla Carbon’s Yeosu plant in Korea.

“Every life is valuable. With this motto in mind, the Yeosu plant took up a series of safety initiatives to ensure all employees at the plant work in a 100% safe environment.  This is even more critical during turnaround time when many contractors are on our premises with jobs involving risky activities, such as work at height, hot work, lock-out/tag-out, and confined space entry,” said U D Lim, Plant Manager, Yeosu Plant.

At Yeosu, safety is part of the plant culture and attaining the highest levels of safety lies in its preparedness. Employees and contractors have high levels of engagement and involvement in reviewing and executing safety procedures and processes. The turnaround planning and preparation towards a safe workplace begins months in advance. Employees and contractors have high levels of engagement and involvement in reviewing and executing safety procedures and processes. The plant itself goes into a several-day inspection shutdown to ensure every element of the manufacturing process is inspected and maintained. All this is done while keeping in mind production and delivery schedules to customers.

As part of its ongoing adherence to safety procedures, the Yeosu plant has a minimum of two tailgate safety meetings with direct reports twice every week. The Health, Safety and Environmental (HS&E) team conducts a daily safety briefing and meetings for all permanent and temporary employees before the start of work every day. The number of safety inspections which take place every month always exceed the prescribed number as per plant guidelines.

In addition, the HS&E team runs periodic safety inspections for all firefighting equipment and facilities, quarterly surprise internal safety inspections, and safety training for all officials from contracting companies.