Each year the Forging Industry Association surveys its producer members to catalog plant safety conditions across the industry. The survey results also identify the winners of FIA’s Annual Safety Awards. The 2010 Safety Award winners are listed here.
FIA’s Safety Awards are assigned to forging operations in four categories, according to plants’ average annual employment total. Group I covers companies with up to 80 employees, Group II includes companies with 81 to 175 employees, Group III represents companies with 176 to 325 employees, and Group IV is for companies with326 employees or more.
The annual safety survey tracks a series of recordable figures, but its emphasis is the well-known DART Incidence Rate metric for tracking industrial safety — Days Away from work, work Restrictions, or job Transfer cases.
Survey data is gathered from questionnaires mailed annually to all FIA producer member companies. Producer members provide the data recorded on OSHA Form No. 300, “Summary of Occupational Injuries/ Illnesses for Calendar Year,” for U.S. companies, and from Worker’s Compensation Reports for Canadian companies.
The completed returns provide the basis not only for FIA’s Annual Safety and Health Awards, but also for its Annual Occupational Injury & Illness Report.
FIA’s report includes a summary of safety conditions for the total industry and detailed company rankings, according to the DART Incidence Rate. Each participating company is included within one of four groups, according to its average annual employment. The number of employees is based on the entire forging operation for the company, plant, or division being reported, including executive, administrative, clerical, sales, maintenance, and production.
First-, second-, and third-place finishers are chosen in each group. Companies are identified as winners of the Safety Award plaques for having the lowest Recordable Cases Incidence Rate, provided that the DART Incidence Rate falls below the group average. In the event that Recordable Incidence Rates are equal between two companies, the FIA Safety Committee used the lower DART Incidence Rate to determine the award.
In each group, the committee identified a company as winner of the Improvement Award, to recognize the plants that demonstrate the greatest improvement in its DART Incidence Rate. This award is determined by the percentage of improvement in the DART Incidence Rate compared with the average of the last three years.
A certificate of recognition is awarded to each company that does not receive a first-, second-, or third-place award, but whose Recordable Incidence Rate falls below the group average — provided that the DART Incidence Rate also falls below the group average.
