BENEFITS FOR OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH AND SAFETY IN A LEAN PRACTICE - A CASE STUDY IN THE STEEL INDUSTRY

Abstract

Many papers have been published presenting the benefits of productivity, costs reduce and quality increase of products and services, in the implementation of Lean practices. But few papers relate provide benefits to health and safety in the workplace, which, according to the principles of the Toyota include essentially take care people. This paper presents the benefit in reducing the risk in the activities in one of the units of a company in the steel industry / large metallurgical. The analysis was made after the implementation of a Six Sigma project, using the Lean practice of reduction/elimination of the 7 losses, initially had only intended to gain in productivity. It appears that even obtaining benefits such as increased productivity and reduced stock, the risk in carrying out the activities decreased by 50 % and the whole team reported ergonomic benefits to the applied changes.