A Study on the Application of the Safety Practice Index to Reduce Safety Accidents in the Manufacturing Industry

Abstract

Human casualties caused by industrial accidents pose a serious threat to corporate management due to the continual strengthening of safety laws as well as changes in the public’s awareness of corporate social responsibility. Accordingly, companies are raising safety awareness among employees by regularly conducting on-site safety activities and training to prevent industrial accidents. However, the safety activities, education, and training of many companies are not carried out voluntarily or in practice by their employees, but mostly through formal implementation. To break away from these customary and passive behaviors and establish a mature safety culture, it is crucial to strengthen the execution capacity of safety management in the field; to this end, we plan to utilize the safety practice index (SPI). The safety practice index (SPI), which quantitatively represents the degree of safety practice, is necessary to increase the effectiveness of safety management for the purpose of preventing accidents. In this study, the correlation was verified by comparing the SPI calculated based on the 2018 and 2019 risk management and the safety activity results of manufacturer A with the reported safety accidents. It was also effective in improving the SPI and reducing safety accidents in 2020 by supplementing the weaknesses of the SPI in 2018 and 2019. According to the results of this study, SPI can be used as an effective indicator for safety accident prevention activities by supplementing weaknesses with strengths through strengthening leadership and safety policies, such as classifying and managing the safety management level of a specific period or department.