Glib 1-liners
Never 2 keystrokes when 1 will do
What is: Our principle for making all of our Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) aps user friendly.
For example, most Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) aps require complete re-entry of each line of the SOP from scratch
Templatized SOPs/Chemical Safe Use Instructions (SUIs)
What is: How do you consolidate lots of jobs/chemicals into a smaller cohesive set?
Most aps treat each job or chemical like it is a unique entity never seen before
How we solve it: The user enters a few physical/chemical/regulatory parameters and the ap displays templates that meet these criteria that have been created already
Jeep plant Toledo, 2 miles square, 6 levels high
What is: An example of an Environmental, Health and Safety (EHS) ap that made the work easier instead of harder and so was adopted by a non-traditional technology user
ManGuard built the first Hazardous Waste Manifest printing ap back in the early 80's.
Jeep was one of the companies that licensed the software. They came to training, then we never heard from them. In those days, that meant they weren't using the software in all likelihood.
They upgraded to an AT computer from an XT and we needed to come down and migrate the software.
Partway through, a maintenance guy in his greasy coveralls came up and said "excuse me, I have to print a manifest"
They had figured out that it was less work to create a manifest (10 keystrokes per lineitem on the manifest) using the software than to create the 5-7 part carbon paper form where they had to hand-write the full Department of Transportation (DOT) hazardous material shipping information
40,000 to 350; 10,000 to 50
What is: examples of the metrics of consolidation using templates
40,000 waste profiles reduced to 150 templates plus 200 chemical specific templates
10,000 Safety Data Sheets reduced to 20 main templates and about 50 special use templates
Rediscover the info at each step along the supply chain
What is: the hidden cost of chemical management
(or not, it's always easier to do nothing than to do something)
For manufacturing, about 10% of all ERP transactions have a chemical component
A broader question these days is "what kind of environmental impact does this transaction have"
How we solve this: Structured interface from ERP system to EHS software reduced March 1 EPA report (if the chemical poses a risk to firefighters) and July 1 EPA report (if the chemical poses a risk to fish) from 7 people 2 months to 1 person 5 days for a major automotive assembly plant, processing 165,000 hazardous material transactions semi-automatically
Read the Safety Data Sheet (SDS)
What is: The official jargon that passes the buck on worker safety
The company is at best passing the buck on worker safety and at worst is practicing an environmental justice transgression on its "below the cardboard ceiling (BTCC)" workers, who may be even less able to comprehend the Safety Data Sheet (SDS) than the rest of us
How we fix it: Rules-based human understandable Chemical Safe Use Instructions "In case of spill, if you are trained in the product, soak up with kitty litter and place in 5 gallon pail labeled "Waste gobblydegook". Wear nitrile gloves and safety glasses with side shields while cleaning up the material"
Unintelligible
What is: What most Safety Data Sheets SDS's are to the average worker
How we solve it: Plain human understandable language Safe Use Instructions (SUIs)
User web interface: 1st link is the pdf of the SDS (required); 2nd is to the human understandable SUI; 3rd link is to an OSHA transfer label (in the top 10 OSHA violations is missing/incomplete OSHA transfer labels for containers into which the chemical was transferred that did not have the manufacturer labeling
Saturn nominated for Director's award
What is: An example of a company building a chemical safety program that actually worked for the front line worker
Saturn built a website with 3 links
1st link was the pdf of the SDS (required);
2nd was to the human understandable SUI built using the ManGuard ap;
3rd link was to an OSHA transfer label (in the top 10 OSHA violations is missing/incomplete OSHA transfer labels for containers into which the chemical was transferred that did not have the manufacturer labeling
500-1000 active up to 10,000 total library
What is: the average number of Safety Data Sheets that are actively used at an average large manufacturing facility
Over time, their database of chemicals they ever received a SDS for or ever used is typically on the order of 10,000
3 years or when the chemical changes
What is: The frequency with which Safety Data Sheets should be updated (Canadian requirement which sets the global standard)
Updates when there is a major change is US requirement
Anything goes on long enough it becomes normal
What is: Reason that chemical information for Emergency Responders isn't interactive or AI enabled
For Emergency Responders, chemical information is still being manually cross-referenced at spills and other environmental incidents. And there is no real-time transparency across the supply chain to the contents of shipments.
How we solve it: Build a marketplace to pass the information across the supply chain, and build a "smart ap" to merge the information across multiple sources
NIOSH Emergency Response Guidebook, DOT Emergency Response Guidebook, CAMEO
What are: Aps that don't talk to each other that emergency responders need to integrate information between
None of these resources address mixtures at all, all only address pure chemicals
Formulas exist to calculate the chemical hazards for mixtures. Perfect AI application
Tianjin port explosion Aug 2015
What is: An example of a disaster that occurred because of lack of chemical knowledge across the global supply chain
173 people died, at least 80 were first responders, 800 injured
Chemicals were stored in an urban location adjacent to other incompatible chemicals, in inappropriate quantities. First responders did not have the appropriate chemical response training.
Search online for videos of the explosion.
Number of first responder chemical injury accidents did not go down from 2002-2012
What is: how successful safety initiatives have (or have not) been for first responders
1.6 to 5.9 Billion dollars, includes PTSD
What is: the Cost of Firefighter injuries, Dec 2019 paper
https://nvlpubs.nist.gov/nistpubs/TechnicalNotes/NIST.TN.2078.pdf
Below the cardboard ceiling (BTCC) workforce
What are: Workers who are frequently left behind in chemical safety programs
"More than half time is a de facto acquisition (for a small company)" Mark Gordon, IP Lawyer, Gordon & Glickson
How we solve it: Build a workforce to create the MVP for the ap using no-code tools and part time "BTCC" workers. Train them in skills during the process so they can get a better job at the end of the project
Cognitive challenges
What are: Limiting factors in how training needs to be built for BTCC and other front-line workers
These include Fatigue; Literacy; English as a second language; slower cognitive processing;
How we solve it: The upgraded product will include pictures and videos as well as the standard text, and will automatically translate into other languages
17 Workers doing bathtub refinishing
Number of workers who died between 2000-2015 doing bathtub refinishing
I was in a Holiday Inn Express that suddenly had horrible sweet smelling odor throughout the hotel. I checked out the next morning (should have left that evening)
Reached out to my chemical expert, this was the result
0 for 6 Covid essential worker jobs
What are: My (admittedly unscientific) experience of how much chemical hazard training I received as a BTCC worker at my covid essential worker jobs
During Covid, I rolled through 6 "essential worker" jobs. None included any hazardous materials training of any kind, not even pointing me to where the SDS's were maintained at the site
4 times as likely to be injured or killed
What is: The likelihood that workers with less education and less familiarity with English will be injured on the job, compared to US workers with some college and who are native English speakers
Source: NIH https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2831347/
The Ask: Technology
What no code aps would be best to develop MVP of "next gen" SOP/SUI ap?
The Ask: People
Who is already doing something in this field that might be a useful resource?
The Ask: Team
What are potential team members who might be interested in working on this project?
Who have experience in this field? Or a passionate interest and want to learn about it?
The Ask: Companies
What companies might be interested in licensing this solution as early adopters?
The Ask: Marketplace experience
Who has experience building marketplaces who would be willing to mentor us or would be interested in being part of the project?