Skip to main content
European Commission logo print header
Contenuto archiviato il 2022-11-21

Development and evaluation of a decentralized safety system to improve safety performance in an integrated steel works

Obiettivo

The research project had two main objectives:

- to realize a considerable reduction in the number of lost time accidents at the Hoogovens Steelworks, in the first place by setting up a decentralised safety management system;
- development of techniques for assessing the current safety policy of a company against minimum requirements, that can be established from a normative framework of an 'ideal' safety management system.
Regarding the objectives of Hoogovens (decentralisation of safety management in order to reduce the number of lost time accidents), the most important conclusion is, that, with regard to the successful development of a decentralised safety management system, more problems lie at the 'upper' (central) side of the organisation, than at the shop floor level. This conclusion was already derivable from the results of the initial measurement (phase 1), and has been yet more convincingly demonstrated by the differential success of the various interventions. Those aimed at a greater involvement of workers at shop floor level were largely successful, whilst interventions aimed at structural changes in the safety policies at the level of unit management were far more difficult to implement and - during the intervention phases - were relatively less successful.

Regarding the scientific objectives of this study - the development of measuring techniques for assessing current safety policy - the conclusion has been, that only partial results have been reached, mainly due to circumstances, that could only marginally be influenced by the research team.
Within these objectives the emphasis of the Hoogovens' project will be modified to focus more upon the way in which such changes in employee involvement can be brought about and how they produce their effect on safety. This will complement and expand the work in the British steel project where the emphasis has been upon the development and validation of measures of attitude to analyse the problem and on the evaluation of the overall effectiveness of the changes introduced. The Hoogoven's project can be streamlined by making use of the measuring techniques already developed and by deferring the evaluation of the full effects on accidents and other safety measures until after the project period.

The Hoogoven's project will therefore complement the British Steel project in the following ways:

(a) by extending the validation of the techniques developed for the British Steel project to a third country, thus giving more insight into cross-cultural differences and more confidence in the applicability of the results obtained;
(b) deepening the insight into the reasons why specific techniques for increasing shop-floor participation work or fail to work, thus helping other organizations to adapt the findings from the combined studies to their own organization and culture.

Invito a presentare proposte

Data not available

Meccanismo di finanziamento

Data not available

Coordinatore

HOOGOVENS Ijmuiden B.V.
Contributo UE
Nessun dato
Indirizzo
PA-VEA 3D-10
1970 CA Ijmuiden
Paesi Bassi

Mostra sulla mappa

Costo totale
Nessun dato