Efficient Safety: Documenting & Implementing Processes

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On today’s episode, we’re going to be covering the documenting and implementation of processes.

It’s starting to sound like a broken record, but the truth is, many of the topics for this podcast come from a non-safety origin. Our topic today is yet another one of those.

Although we don’t officially add it to the title, this podcast has been the Wednesday Warehouse Safety Tips or Warehouse Safety Tips Wednesday. It’s not something that follows the rules of staying “Evergreen” (which is making content that’s appears new, regardless of when you listen to it) and today is Episode 103. That’s right! We’re just one more episode away from doing this every week for two years in a row! And up until this week, we hadn’t experienced any hiccups in delivering that. But yours truly found himself in the Emergency Room and then admitted to the hospital without an episode ready to go. Point is, even though we didn’t post on Wednesday, we almost didn’t post at all this week.

That brings us to a lesson for this week. What does your facility do in your absence? Have you ever been to a business where there’s a person that knows everything? They’re that person that has been there, done that, and has the t-shirt for virtually everything that’s ever happened at the business. When those sorts of people are sick, leave, or in the worst-case scenario die, they take all their knowledge, tips, and tricks with them! Now you might not be as knowledgeable or vital to operations as the before mentioned person is, but if you do anything specialized that most people couldn’t just fill in and do, then you’re just as essential.

So how do you remedy this? One of the answers is documenting operations, such as what’s accomplished via ISO (which is the International Organization of Standardization). Much like the 5S Methodology and Lean Six Sigma, ISO has a lot of moving parts. But from the highest of high views, what we’re talking about here is making sure you have documentation in place of exactly what you do within your position, explained to the point that theoretically someone could complete your duties in your absence. And it’s not just about making sure other people can do your job, but that you can do your job as efficiently as possible. This would apply to things you don’t have to do all the time. If you had step-by-step documentation of a process, it would be much easier to follow than trying to remember how you did it last time and possibly skip needed steps.

As always, implementing the 5S Methodology, specifically Sustain, will allow you to revisit your documentation on a regular basis to assure it’s up to date and constantly striving to update it so things are being done as efficiently as possible. We look forward to seeing you on our 104th Episode / Two-Year Anniversary Podcast next week.