Beer brewer puts maximum effort into safety

At Heineken, safety always has a prominent place on the agenda. "It is a basic requirement for all our activities and contributes to making people want to work for us. We recognize that salary and benefits are essential, but physical and mental safety are also important," says Chris Barneveld who works at the brewery as OpCo Safety Manager HNS and SHE Manager at the 's-Hertogenbosch location. In the context of safety, they started a process to optimally separate passenger and forklift traffic. They consciously chose the plastic collision protection from A-SAFE. We asked Barneveld about their experiences.

"We found that there are still many accidents involving forklifts worldwide. In all kinds of industries, not just ours. Because the health damage from such an incident is often significant, we set ourselves the global task of protecting pedestrian traffic from forklifts as best we could at our locations. We started with an in-depth RI&E to identify the risk areas. We then looked at whether alternatives could be deployed here. Where this was not possible, we wanted to create a physical barrier, so we turned to A-SAFE. A familiar party to us, but I think the entire logistics world knows their well-tested barriers."

Science and patents

Indeed, anyone who takes a look at A-SAFE's website will see that numerous research and testing programs underlie their products. A-SAFE uses their proprietary three-layer Memaplex™ plastic, developed by polymer scientists. This material is extremely strong and has a built-in memory that allows the crash protection to spring along and recover, even after multiple collisions. "The quality and the fact that the crash protection does not need to be replaced after a collision is important to us. Together with A-SAFE we made a plan and the barriers were installed. However, that's not all! The drawing board often turns out to be different from practice after all."

Opinion

And with that, Barneveld immediately comes up with good advice for companies that also want to get started with collision protection. "Only when the barriers are actually placed do employees experience the extent to which these barriers may slow them down in their work. By listening to them and sometimes adjusting the plan in the interim, you ultimately arrive at the most optimal solutions. The end result is sacred to us. After all, safety on and in a company stands or falls with the people. They must see the benefit of the measures, but they must also be able to carry out their work in a pleasant and safe manner. So it is important to involve your colleagues, be patient and take your time on such a project, but always keep the end goal in mind; improved safety for our people."

Flexibility

That brings Barneveld to another point of interest: "Choose a flexible company with mechanics who know how it works. So we've already adjusted our plans regularly, and for A-SAFE that's no problem at all. But what also turned out to be very important is how their mechanics interact with our people on the floor. When the assembly crew installs the barriers, they are naturally asked a lot of questions: what are you doing here, what is this for, why are you doing that, and so on. The mechanics at A-SAFE deal with this wonderfully. With a clear explanation and a lot of patience, they speak to the employees. This also creates a very nice dynamic," Barneveld laughs.