Do You Know a Gas Line When You See It?

If you’ve walked around the GIW Thomson plant recently, you may have noticed a change: A color-coded system for natural gas, air, and water lines. While this splash of color may seem small, this new system is a huge step in improving safety for everyone in the plant.

Adding colorful, visual cues in addition to the typical safety signage makes it possible for employees on the shop floor to think on their feet. “It’s like when you’re driving and you have to make a quick decision, you want as much visual information as possible,” explains Keith Milburn, assistant plants manager at GIW Industries. “You want to know who’s behind you and who’s beside you and if it’s safe to go through an intersection. We want the same thing on our shop floor because there’s always a lot of activity going on. The faster employees can make good, safe decisions, the better off we are long-term.”

On the fast track to visual management
Before Thomson added the color-coding system, all lines, pipes, and hoses throughout the plant looked the same. “In the past, these lines came down the beams at different locations in the plant. They weren’t labeled and colored — all the pipes were black iron and all the hoses were red,” says Mark Bean, foundry manager.

“So we’ve color-coded them and actually painted the pipe coming down from the main header: Natural gas is yellow, compressed air is red, and water is green,” he says. “It’s visual management. It’s kind of like a stop sign on the street: not only can you read the sign, you also know what to do because of the color.”

Signs throughout the Thomson plant explain the new color-coding system. And to simplify the process even further, the colors match OSHA’s standards and are globally recognized. “These colors are part of a typical global color-coding system,” Milburn says. “So if a foreign operator — say, a KSB counterpart — were to come into this plant, he or she would be right at home with the color coding.”

Proactive employees make changes happen
This change is being recognized as a GIW company best practice; however, it wouldn’t have come about without the proactive observance of the Process Improvement Team and GIW’s workers.

“The Process Improvement Team is out there doing things for the employees on a regular basis,” Milburn says. This includes staying up-to-date on what’s working well at other facilities.

[sidebar]Safety at a Glance
Here’s a key to Thomson’s new, easy-to-recognize color-coding system:

• Natural gas — yellow
• Compressed air — red
• Water — green[/sidebar]

Bean notes that this color-coding system is one such example: “This system isn’t something we dreamed up,” he says. “We actually went to visit one of our vendor’s plants and we picked up the idea from them. There’s a lot of merit in going around and looking at different sites.”

Milburn also adds that a lot of safety updates like this one stem directly from employees’ safety concerns, which are all read and reviewed by members of GIW’s management team. “We may not address every safety concern word-for-word, but those concerns definitely influence what actually happens,” he says. “You’re being heard, so continue to speak up!”

At the end of the day, it’s changes like this that make GIW a safe place to work. “What we want long-term is for our employees to be able to make quick, safe decisions,” Milburn says. “Our employees want to do a good job and work safely, so our part is to give them every chance to make that happen.” Thomson’s new visual enhancements are certainly a step in the right direction.