The Toyota Industrial Equipment Manufacturing, Inc. plant in Columbus, Ind., is a busy, bustling place.
At full capacity, 1,300 workers are crowded into the million square-foot facility, navigating tight rows and busy cells, pumping out a new, custom-built Toyota lift truck every 3:40 on its main assembly line alone.
It's a safe plant, as you'd expect from anything in the Toyota family. But that's no easy task to achieve.
The narrow lanes of the facility are choked with crisscrossing lift trucks and automated guided vehicles loaded with engines and machine components, while 250 welders throw sparks into the atmosphere. Complicating the environment, among those 1,300 workers, TIEM has had 550 temporary employees pass through the facility already this year.
It's a situation rife for injury, rife for disaster. Yet it seems to consistently prevent most issues. In fact, safety there seems to actually be improving.
More surprising, that effort is maintained by an EHS team just five members strong, when fully staffed.
Read the complete article on EHS Today, a companion site of IndustryWeek and part of Penton's Manufacturing and Supply Chain Group.
