Systematized Health and Safety Activities for Creation of a Safety Culture

Our refinery “Shikoku operations” is located at Imabari city Ehime prefecture Japan, of CDU capacity of 138,000 b/d.

From the past, we have been engaged in as usual safety and health activities, but each activity in our refinery had been separately managed section by section in a different manner. Therefore, each activity had not had enough co-relation and synergy each other.

In 2003, for the purpose of systematizing, we put each activity under the unified scheme which covers overall refinery, based on the basic philosophy seeking “0 (zero) Accidents and Injury”. We called it “TSC Movement”, which consists of several “Small Group Activities” and “Cross-Section Activities” with 3-year action plan.

The “Small Group Activities”, composed of small number of employees, have been done in workshop at each section for promoting to work cooperatively and several themes have been chosen on yearly basis. The activities have been classified in to two categories, i.e. “Continue Type” and “Kaizen Type”.

The “Continue Type” covers various themes in which we have continuously been tacking, for example, sharing and analyzing the incidents such as near miss, etc. at our refinery, and 5-S [5S stands for Seiri (orderliness), Seiton (neatness & tidiness), Seiso (cleaning), Seiketsu (cleanliness), and Shisei (good behavior) ] activities. The “Kaizen Type” covers several themes for establishment and improvement of better working environment and optimal work process, etc. The “Small Group Activities” is expected not only to solve themes but also to improve individual safety awareness through their own activity.

“Cross-Section Activities” have been operated under 3-year action plan, covering issues to be resolved thoroughly over several departments in our refinery. We have continued this effort for 15 years, to tackle such overall refinery issues as enhancement in basic safety system, etc. and this action plan has been revised every 3 years with the targets being modified.

The “TSC Movement” has had a positive effect to promote employees’ awareness in safety and sense of unity under refinery president. As a result, industrial injury case in our refinery has scarcely become to be found only 1 time for last 15 years.

Here, we report our health and safety activities including the “TSC Movement” for 15 years and its achievement.

Keywords: health and safety activities, safety culture, Kaizen 5 S