“Safety First” has been the focus of organizations for many years.  We recently read an interesting article about how the idea of “Safety First” can cause conflict between the safety and production in many organizations.  Being safe and improving safe work practices are not always seen as improvements that improve the bottom line of the organization in the eyes of production, especially organizations that are working to implement lean processes.

Lean organizations want to reduce and eliminate unproductive “waste” as much as possible while still maintaining a safety work environment. These organizations want to improve quality and production by ensuring they are using all resources available in the most effective way possible and eliminating resources that are time drains and that are not impacting the bottom line positively.

As regulating bodies are requiring more and more inspections and audits of facilities and operations, more human resources times is being shifted from production to ensuring compliance with regulations; thus reducing the ability to be a lean as possible. One way to improve and be lean is by making sure all employees are being used in the most efficient and effective way possible.  One way to improve the use of the human resource time available is by implementing an advanced mobile inspection and audit system.  An automated system for inspections and audits allows the process to be completed much faster and with more accuracy then a traditional paper-based system.  The time saved by automating the task can then be reallocated to the organizations other needs.

For organizations who want to stress safety first and still go lean, an automated inspections system is the best of both worlds.  They can complete all the preventative inspections, audits, and observations of equipment, people and processes in only a fraction of the time required with paper-based data collection, meaning the safety and production teams can be in harmony rather that conflict.

For more information about inspectiTRAC, a unique system designed to automated the inspection, audit and observation process visit www.inspectiTRAC.com