Blog Tesla Outlines Plan to Operate ‘Safest Car Factory in the World’

Tesla published a blog post this week from VP for Environmental, Health, and Safety Laurie Shelby that outline’s the company’s intentions to create the safest car factory in the world.

Shelby, who joined Tesla in October, discussed a commitment to proactive safety measures that will help reduce the Fremont factory’s Total Recordable Incident Rate.

“The traditional workplace safety metric is Total Recordable Incident Rate (TRIR). Based on the data through the end of the year, Tesla’s 2017 recordable incident rate at the Fremont Factory has improved nearly 25% percent from 2016 and is now equivalent to the most recent published industry average. This is obviously still not where we want to be, but I’m extremely confident that we will be below industry average in 2018.

Shelby also announced a new Return to Work program.

When an employee is injured at Tesla and unable to perform their normal duties, work restrictions are put in place. In our previous program, when the injured worker was not able to continue working in their regular department, they were assigned to a less demanding job to help accommodate their injury so they can recover. In that situation, the employee was paid the wage that was associated with that new job and they could collect disability or workers compensation payments through our insurance provider to help fill the gap. This is typical across the industry, but not good enough.

In our new program, even an injured employee who comes back to work in a less demanding role will have their pay remain the same. And if Tesla is unable to accommodate an injured employee within the company, we’re now temporarily placing them with non-profits and local organizations like YMCA, libraries or food pantries where they can help the community and receive their regular compensation.

Tesla recently opened a new training center where all production employees learn the basics of manufacturing, the importance of ergonomics, and how to do their jobs safely before ever stepping on the production line. The company plans to hire a medical director to oversee a 24/7 in-house medical center, and they’re implementing an early intervention program with athletic trainers who will work proactively with employees on the line to address aches and pains before they become injuries.

See Shelby’s full blog post here.

 

[vark]

proofreading note: Line 2: outlines

 

[jeffro01]

Simple, remove the workers, replace with robots. Done.

Jeff

 

[Ulmo]

(I replied to this on Electrek, but the DISQUS system kept marking my post as spam (notice the dishonest spelling of the software name), so I'll present it here instead.)

Having worked in local Silicon Valley and regionally local factories before with really good safety programs (one excellent and the other OK), I noticed the lack of signature efforts to have a super safe working environment in the Tesla factory when I took my two tours and when I looked around, but that was just a quick sense. I think the evil unions (some unions are good, some ok, some evil) exploited that. I assume that before this, Tesla just had a default safety methodology, for lack of a better way to describe it.

What I see in your article is exactly the type of behavior that a factory that is serious about safety does in order to become a much safer place to work. I hate to say it, but the evil unions may have had a silver lining of kicking Tesla into gear about this. However, once a safety culture has been implemented at all levels of the company, it's not very hard to maintain, and that will basically erase that issue that the evil unions had tried to exploit before.

My recommendation is that Tesla continue to have a culture of safety, and not re-enter the position they were in before. Although it does cost more upfront to have a culture of safety, it also costs less in the bottom line due to avoiding injuries and avoiding poor product workmanship overall. The benefits are three: 1. Safer working environment, meaning happier healthier workers. 2. Usually less expensive and less volatile costs, as well as improved quality of work and productivity usually (not always). 3. Closes an attack vulnerability point for attackers (in the most recent case, evil unions).