JBT AeroTech Takes Off Towards Its Goal For Safety - Target Zero!

On a recent ProcessMAP EHS Leadership Roundtable, we heard from safety leaders at JBT AeroTech regarding how the team is managing their company’s safety goals. Known within the organization as Target Zero, this initiative is transforming the way JBT AeroTech employees approach and perform their jobs. Speaking on the roundtable were Tony Ceja, Director of EHS and Joshua Sandoval, EHS division manager for JBT AeroTech Airport Services.

The company’s aviation sector division, JBT AeroTech, comprises 10 different product lines serving both the commercial and military sectors. The JBT team works both inside and outside the airport terminal, making sure that all bags get to the proper aircraft on time, all the equipment works smoothly and on time to help ensure that passengers get to their destination safely. JTB operates the pushback tractors that move the aircraft away from the gate, the cargo loaders that load the aircraft and the baggage handling system to make sure that as passengers check bags they get to the correct aircraft. That orchestra of movement is where JBT experiences most of its challenges for safety, as it integrates with airlines, tenants, and other airport vendors to orchestrate a smooth operation.

The airport environment is usually fast-paced, it is often under construction because airports never stop building. There is definitely a challenge to build a safe workplace, and keep teams focused on safety.  When the JBT safety team tried to change employees’ perspectives, they experienced a lot of resistance from the frontline employees and from the management teams. The safety team understood that to be successful, they needed to focus on leading indicators in addition to lagging indicators and to use those proactive measures to keep everyone safe, including airport tenants, customers, and airline employees. At the end of the day, this entire community would benefit from everybody looking at that process. 

Some of the challenges faced included capturing those evaporative moments out in the field. Why would JBT employees want to track those near misses and behaviors that weren’t conducive to a safe work environment? What value did documenting behaviors have to JBT, and to the greater airport community? How does JBT measure that, make it transparent, show value to JBT’s leadership, and to the airport about how to effect change? The safety team recognized they needed to define these messages.  While some near misses were being documented and they saw some behavior-based observations (BBOs) coming in, the observations were not consistent. The team needed to look at some leading indicators and successfully did that with the implementation of Target Zero. 

For JBT, Target Zero is a new way of thinking about measuring and continuously improving HSE performance. It is a company-wide commitment to consistent global safety policies, systems and programs, and a prevention mindset that will keep JBT employees safe through reporting and intervention.

What has changed?

The company-wide mindset for measurement has changed. JBT no longer measures success in its safety performance through incrementally smaller incident rates, but by injury prevention and intervention. Target Zero helped JBT to align their vision across the divisions to make sure that everyone was looking at the same target, looking at behavior-based observations and doing something about that feedback or closing that gap. The company is moving away from near-miss hazard recognitions to real near misses. With the mobile platform and configurations in the system, JBT has been able to do a little bit of analysis and really look at those evaporated moments and bring value to them. 

JBT’s Company-wide Goal: Zero Safety Incidents, Worldwide, Everyday

In 2017, JBT began rolling Target Zero out to all locations. Zero incidents to prevent, report, and intervene. With this unified vision they were able to look at concepts utilizing mobile, not only in ProcessMAP but also in other systems including their lean map action processes, and other lean concepts.

Accomplishing Target Zero

JBT moved from a paper-based program to ProcessMAP’s digital platform, where mobile-first EHS technology enabled JBT to track, record and learn from near misses and behavior-based observations. As the process unfolded, the company leadership took notice of the positive trends, including workers’ compensation costs being reduced and a decrease in the total number of citations. Innovative EHS technology further enabled JBT to improve the transparency of data reported and helped to mature that perspective from lagging indicators to leading indicators. 

JBT’s safety team also worked with front-line supervisors to instill a culture of safety “servant leadership,” where the supervisors work as much for the employees as employees work for them. This helped to break down the traditional hierarchy and moved employees to a place where feedback and coaching became effective. The team set goals including training, behavior-based observations, near misses, corrective and preventative actions and leadership. They utilized the ProcessMAP platform to capture those evaporative moments and created recognition programs for employee involvement and engagement in employee safety.  

The path to Target Zero began with a thoughtful approach to identifying the leading indicators that work for JBT. The safety team compiled that information and created a scorecard that shows BBO, participation rate, and near-miss scoring based on the participation rate. Scores are based on the site headcount because there are different numbers of employees at each site. The team also uses corrective and preventative actions, the leadership score, and monthly computer-based training, and they weigh their scores, to render an overall site health score. 

The site scores help to define the health of each site and their level of engagement. When identifying leading indicators, the team had to consider what would prevent this type of injury from occurring by looking at some lagging indicators of families of injuries. They considered whether training had increased hazard reporting, or whether it was something else. After identification, the team would place emphasis on that leading indicator. They understood that participation and performance must be transparent, must be communicated and they needed to focus on leading indicators as much as lagging indicators. They knew that accountability and buy-in had to be present at all levels. ProcessMAP’s technology works well for JBT because of the ease of reporting and ease of pulling and compiling these reports in order to develop each scorecard.

Accomplishing Target Zero

During monthly safety calls, the team discusses different trends and factors.  Recently, they have been reviewing the near-miss participation rate based on headcount and a correlation to where the team saw incidents occurring. Their analysis shows that individual employees are actually turning in more than one near-miss per month. The team is able to identify that correlation because of the ease of pulling the data out of the ProcessMAP system. The data shows that leading indicators are working, and when interventions are not taken quickly enough, they can turn into lagging indicators. Reviewing those relationships helps in the decision making in JBT’s plan to check that cycle.

The team is looking at near-misses, and the participation rate in conjunction with their BBO at-risk identification. The sites that proactively identify at-risk behaviors through BBO reporting also bode well as leading indicators. Data analytics have given the JBT safety team good indicators of where they focus their attention now. Additionally, they can determine exactly which team members have participated and when, and who has not participated and for how long. The safety team’s ability to examine this granular data has increased their employees’ accountability and participation rates across the business.  

The JBT safety team is using ProcessMAP’s Insight dashboards and data visualization tools to share actionable insights through the different levels of their organization. But as the team transitioned from spreadsheets and various paper reports to talk to different levels in the organization, they started to incorporate a lot of data that they can pull directly from our EAM dashboards and also ProcessMAP dashboards to utilize the platform more often.

Engagement and Ownership

The safety team at JBT is utilizing ProcessMAP’s platform to gather critical information. By using the system, they are looking for high adoption rates, high engagement and ownership. Being able to drill down to the real challenges enables the safety team to correct those deficiencies. They now understand that it starts with their employees looking at prevention through reporting and intervening.  The safety team wants to reward that engagement with recognition and awards. The team has been very successful in driving down the overall TII and LTII over the years. The team has successfully engaged safety coordinators and developed a relationship with hourly employees that is really a volunteer system versus something they are told to do.  The team has been able to change the perspective for employees to where they now see they get to be a part of something bigger than themselves.

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