It is of paramount importance to Sormat that the fixings last. The products are tested carefully to avoid occupational accidents at the customers’ sites. Similarly, occupational safety is everything in Sormat’s own production.
“Sormat’s products are thoroughly tested and manufactured under control,” says Jukka Huikkonen, occupational safety and health manager at Sormat.
Sormat’s main products are ETA-approved, and they have undergone extensive tests by an external testing institution for the approval.
“VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, for example, supervises our operations through annual audits to ensure that the products are made as agreed and the quality control of production works. We make an ultimate tensile strength test on each steel wire batch for the through bolts in our in-house quality control to ensure the compliance of the raw material. The measurement instruments are also regularly calibrated,” Huikkonen says.
Testing institutions perform tests on behalf of Sormat. In the tests, the anchors are fixed to the correct material and loaded until the breaking of the fixing base or anchor to find out the maximum load that can be allowed for them.
“We also make similar tests in our own product development prototype workshop,” Huikkonen says.
ZERO ACCIDENTS PER YEAR
Sormat’s occupational safety and health committee convenes three times a year. In addition to occupational safety and health manager Jukka Huikkonen, its members are occupational safety and health representatives from production and administration. The occupational safety and health representatives make regular inspection rounds in their own workplaces.
New production lines and workstations are systematically surveyed using the Riski-Arvi tool.
“We make any corrections necessary based on the risk assessment to minimise the probability of risks. We regularly inspect all production lines using the same tool,” Huikkonen says.
When a new production line or work phase is taken into production, the process is also reviewed with occupational healthcare services. At this time, attention is paid to occupational safety and ergonomics.
“We rotate duties daily so that no one has to work at the same work station all the time. Rotation increases the meaningfulness of work, attention and reduces strain injuries.
Typical accidents include cuts and sprains caused by lifting heavy objects. The busy forklift truck traffic also causes dangerous situations.
“All of our employees report near miss situations. We jointly review why an accident almost took place and what we could do differently to prevent it from happening again.
The aim is zero accidents per year.
“The longest period with no accidents has been 553 days. Whenever accidents have not happened for 200 days, we celebrate the event with a cake.