Manufacturer Exits Paper Trail – Moves to a Software Path for Better EHS Management

It was really a matter of getting with the times.

PACE Industries, a U.S.-based die-casting company, was not unlike many organizations struggling to manage environmental, health and safety (EHS) processes. They were looking to get out of the old world of paper and Excel spreadsheets and into the modern age of intelligent digital reporting.

A company with a history dating to the 1970s, PACE was buried under a spreadsheet mountain of incident reporting from 12 divisions and 21 locations throughout the U.S., plus two plants in Mexico. It’s a busy place. You name it, and PACE probably manufactures it, taking aluminum, magnesium and zinc, melting it down, putting it in high-pressure molds, and literally turning it into thousands of parts. Everything from components for the automotive and lighting industries, to barbecue grills, and even guidance chips for missile systems. Suffice to say, paper-based processes simply weren’t cutting it.

“We wanted to look at our data from different perspectives,” said Ken Sandlin, PACE’s vice-president of health and safety. “We wanted the ability to look at (our) data in different ways – quickly and simply…without having to be a computer programmer.”

That wasn’t happening prior to introducing an EHS software solution. Each company division created and managed its own Excel spreadsheet for tracking incident reporting and other EHS-related factors. These separate documents would eventually make their way to a master spreadsheet, used to then extract select reports. It was far from being an efficient and timely process, and it was a cumbersome approach at best.

Introducing a software-based incident reporting and document management solution helped PACE achieve impressive improvements. According to Sandlin, PACE from 2011 to 2015 reduced its recordable accident rate by more than 62 percent, accident severity rates by more than 85 percent and Workman’s Compensation Insurance premiums by $1.2 million.

The company then refocused its use of the EHS software solution on what Sandlin called, “the Critical Six.” These were management system programs that posed the greatest hazards. PACE came up with six, including lock out, tag out, slips, trips, and falls, plus guarding.

“We wanted to start tracking the injuries related to the Critical Six,” Sandlin said. “We weren’t able to do that in the past with Excel.”

The PACE story continues in a series of interviews conducted by Intelex Technologies with Sandlin. PACE purchased the Intelex EHS software solution, and through Sandlin’s discussion you’ll discover:

• How digitizing PACE’s EHS incident management and document control helps Sandlin and his team be more effective in their jobs,
• The value and importance of mobility for PACE, enabled through a software solution, and,
• What are the best and most useful features of the Intelex EHS software platform.

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