Fireside Chat with Dennis McKinney

Sr. Director of EHS and Global Citizenship at Fortune Brands Home & Security, Inc. (FBHS)

Dennis McKinney

Dennis McKinney has over forty years’ experience with leading manufacturing and distribution companies. He now provides strategic direction on EHS and ESG to Fortune Brands Home & Security. As Sr. Director, Environmental, Health and Safety, Mr. McKinney provides strategic insight in the areas of management systems, environmental remediation, mergers and acquisitions, OSHA / EPA compliance and auditing, sustainability, ergonomics, workers’  compensation management, and security.

Prior to joining FBHS in 2011, he worked for Moen Incorporated, an operating company of FBHS, as the Director, EHS, an HR Director, and Plant Manager. Earlier in his career he worked for both Premier Industrial and Parker Hannifin in Cleveland and has taught the Industrial Safety and Hygiene course at Cleveland State University. He received his Bachelor of Science in Engineering Management from Purdue University and has a Master of Science in Industrial Engineering from Cleveland State University.

Mr. McKinney is a Certified Safety Professional, and a Senior Human Resources Professional, a lead auditor for ISO 14001 and OHSAS 18001, a certified OSHA General Industry Outreach Trainer, and a member of the American Society of Safety Professionals.”

kevin-richards

Kevin Richards

Hello Dennis! Thank you for joining me in this fireside chat! Can you please tell us a little bit about Fortune Brands?

Hello Kevin, thank you for inviting me to this conversation! Fortune Brands (NYSE: FBHS) is a home and security products company built on industry-leading brands and innovative products for kitchens, bathrooms, entryways, and outdoor living spaces. The company has three divisions – plumbing, cabinets, and outdoors & security – with market leadership positions in each. With FY2020 revenues of $6.1 billion, Fortune Brands is a Fortune 500 company and is listed in the S&P 500 index. We have 27,500 employees worldwide, spread across 57 manufacturing plants and 29 distribution centers.

Dennis McKinney

Dennis McKinney

kevin-richards

Kevin Richards

What’s your strategic outlook on the role of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) principles in driving growth for Fortune Brands?

ESG principals are foundational to FBHS being a profitable company, a respected employer, and a responsible corporate citizen. Our ESG Report provides a resource to address questions related to specific ESG metrics and initiatives we believe are meaningful to our business, including:

  • Safety Targets and Safety Programs
  • Employee Health & Wellness Benefits
  • Diversity, Equity & Inclusion and Development
  • Energy and Water Usage
  • Waste and Recycling
  • Manufacturing Responsible Products
  • Environmentally-Friendly Innovations
  • Ethical Standards for Employees & Partners
Dennis McKinney

Dennis McKinney

kevin-richards

Kevin Richards

What role do you envision ProcessMAP’s EHS/ESG solutions will play in enabling this vision?

Fortune Brands began transitioning to the ProcessMAP platform in 2020. This decision was driven by our realization that we required a new, more robust web-based Environmental, Health and Safety (EH&S) data management platform to give our EH&S teams, facility leadership, senior corporate leadership, and our production management real-time data regarding safety and environmental metrics.

The ProcessMAP platform allows us to monitor energy conservation, water usage and waste streams to better identify areas for improvement. It also helps us further improve worker.

safety by tracking employee safety metrics, audits, and training; helping us flag potential work hazards; providing leading indicators; and giving EH&S insight into behavioral trends. The new system’s multi-language platform is also key to gathering data in our global locations, and to further improving our ESG reporting.

Dennis McKinney

Dennis McKinney

kevin-richards

Kevin Richards

This is a major digital transformation initiative you undertook. What are some of your immediate focus areas?

There are several immediate focus areas for us. Some of these include:

  • Further improve our ESG/Sustainability metrics reporting. ProcessMAP’s solutions will help us better track gaps and variations in reported data and normalize the data so as to help prevent errors and increase stakeholder confidence.
  • Incorporate a direct feed from our utility support partner to the ProcessMAP platform to have a single source of truth for environmental data for the entire organization.

  • Develop and track corrective actions, assign responsibility, drive accountability, and escalate issues in a more seamless manner, to further help us work safe.

  • Enable all safety stakeholders to conduct audits and inspections on a mobile device. This is a key accelerator for our safety goals.

  • Two-way data integration with our workers’ compensation Third Party Administrators (TPAs) to simplify the claims management process.

  • Improve the metrics associated with avoiding Significant Injuries and Fatalities (SIF)

  • Leverage the robust mobile capabilities to track leading safety indicators like near-misses, observations, inspections, risk assessments, and on-time closure of CAPAs to have a material impact on lagging indicators like Recordable Incident Rate (RIR), Lost Time Incident Rate (LTIR), and SIFs.

Dennis McKinney

Dennis McKinney

kevin-richards

Kevin Richards

That’s an impressive and commendable action plan to hit the ground running! What helped you select ProcessMAP over other potential options?

It starts and ends with customer service. ProcessMAP delivered on caring how we utilize, measure, and advance as an EHS organization. ProcessMAP’s team demonstrated their responsiveness to our business requirements and their capability to grow with us. The interconnectivity of the various modules delivers a rich user experience. The Low-Code Application development Platform (LCAP) “AppBuilder” gives us an opportunity to easily build and rapidly deploy ready-to-use mobile apps that address certain specific requirements related to performance and reporting. In fact, we are also asking our third-party auditing partners to utilize the ProcessMAP templates to expedite actions and track open items to closure.

Dennis McKinney

Dennis McKinney

kevin-richards

Kevin Richards

What was your experience with ProcessMAP during implementation/ rollout? Is there anything that you would like to highlight?

Our overall experience with the implementation process has been very positive. The hand-over from the sales to the customer success team was seamless. There was a strong implementation plan with clearly defined timelines and more than adequate communication touchpoints along the way. ProcessMAP’s team made sure that all of the unique requests from our various businesses were promptly addressed. Potential issues were quickly resolved, and the team also helped us with the change management process.

One of the elements that really stood out as a differentiator for us was the inclusion of an EHS/ESG subject matter expert from your global Center of Excellence (CoE) team. This consultative approach helped us adopt critical best practices necessary for a world-class EHS management program.

Dennis McKinney

Dennis McKinney

kevin-richards

Kevin Richards

What are some key recommendations for your peers (or the EHS community-at-large) from your experience in driving an EHS transformation initiative?

One of the most fundamental as well as challenging steps in driving a major EHS digital transformation initiative is to build a business case for change and get buy-in from stakeholders at all levels of the organization. People often get accustomed to the status-quo, and can be reluctant to change, even for something better. ProcessMAP clearly identified gaps in the incumbent processes and highlighted the advantages of an integrated platform. Fortunately for us, Fortune Brands leaders understand the importance of having a robust EHS management platform, and how it helps our teams and our external stakeholders, like ESG investors. They fully supported this initiative. Having that alignment from the top is really advantageous.

Additionally, EHS teams must perform their own due-diligence to identify what data to migrate and whether migrating all the legacy data is even useful. Furthermore, account adequate time for the fact that migrating old data to a new system and validating the data for accuracy can be time-intensive.

Dennis McKinney

Dennis McKinney

kevin-richards

Kevin Richards

Thank you, Dennis! Your insights and firsthand account of leading a major EHS transformation program will be of great value to EHS professionals across the board. Thank you for your time and your trust in ProcessMAP! We look forward to supporting you as trustworthy partners as you and your team scale greater heights of success

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