Some ideas to be working on during the ‘slow time’ at the end of the year.
1) Audit your shop’s Injury, Illness, Accident records and Incident reports.If any are missing now is the time to start looking- before you need to prepare your next OSHA 300 log.
2) Audit your OSHA 300 log. If you find any deficiencies- FIX THEM!
3) Prepare a listing of all raw materials brought in by type and grade to facilitate next year’s TRI reporting.
4) Review the years stack of no quotes. What capabilities do you lack that the market is telling you you need?
5) Review your jobs by profitability list. (If you don’t have one, why not?) What is it that you are really doing right?
6) Look at your machine utilization rate by department or type. If you have clear winners or losers the market is telling you that the way you are assigning costs needs to be reevaluated.
7) Come in on the weekend when noone else is there. Bring a trusted friend or colleague that is not in the business. Look, really look, at what you see. Are you comfortable? What would you change? Can you answer their questions about “Why it’s like this?”
8) Develop a safety, quality, and a production theme for the year. In my steel mill days I made it the “Year of No Rust Claims,” and our work and investigations and permanent corrective actions put an end to rust claims off that mill by the middle of the summer. For the rest of the year and the next…Why not do that for safety, and productivity too?
9) Inspect all slings, cables, straps, and other lifting and rigging. Destroy and replace all showing frays, wear, damage of any kind.
10) Identify the stupidest policy that you have in place. Eliminate it.
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