CMA DE Plant Awarded 2019 United States Safety Award

CMA Decatur Plant, recently received the annual safety award from Toray US headquarters. Congratulations to all employees of the plant for their tremendous effort in 2019.

A little background that will help all understand where we are today and where we came from to achieve this goal. In 2018 and even before, we thought we had a good safety and environmental program, yet we still may see 1 or 2 incidents per year where employees received a slight injury. In 2018 that really changed. Our plant encountered 4 serious injuries, 2 lacerations and 2 partial finger amputations. This was the first time in our plants history to have 4 injuries in one year, and in this case just a few months apart. Without question our once thought of good safety program and record was no more. We needed change!

Our change started with a focus on People in the plant, our plant environment and Our Leadership. We made fundamental changes to our plant culture through review of all three areas. Our employees told us we need to listen better and do what we say we will do, for example; act on safety suggestions in a more precise and aggressive manner. We needed to go to the Gemba more often and see the actual case from the employee’s perspective. As leadership we needed to interact more with employees in the Gemba, so we could understand what they were experiencing and act appropriately.

Our leadership and employees working together changed our environment in which we work, and therefore we have changed our culture. We are committed to continually improve the basics of safety and accident prevention. As we say each morning, One DAY at a time, One Task at a time.

Congratulations to the entire employee community at Toray CMA Decatur Plant. Well Done!