Jeffrey A Forgang, vice-president, safety, Tata Steel, addressed the vendor partners of the company and outlined some of the basic safety initiatives for all to follow. These included increased visibility of the vendor personnel on-site to get a first-hand understanding of the workplace challenges, deployment of skilled supervisors and employees, no compromise on quality of Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and required machinery, execution of Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) at the shopfloor, and non-tolerance of safety violation, among other things.
He was addressing the 12th ‘Sumilan’ on ‘Involvement and commitment of vendor partners for managing contractor safety at Tata Steel’ organised at Steelenium Hall within steel plant. ‘Sumilan’ is a monthly conference organised by Corporate Safety, Tata Steel, whereby its vendor partners get the opportunity to interact with the management and be apprised of different safety related concerns in the company.
At the outset, Shyam Sunder, chief, corporate safety, briefed the gathering on the objective of ‘Sumilan’ at Tata Steel and how it has helped in implementing important issues like safety timings, quality of PPEs to employees, introduction of bus service for vendor employees inside the plant, etc. The vision of the company was lauded by Shivesh Verma , vice president, Tata Workers’ Union (TWU), who stressed upon the need for training of the contractor employees.
Fatalities and serious injuries are major concerns for Tata Steel. One of the key ways to mitigate the issue is an effective communication system for proper implementation of safety measures. It was with this objective that ‘Sumilan’ was introduced in Tata Steel in October 2013, as a monthly Vendor-Management communication initiative, to enhance safety communication and deployment in the company.