Car Care Month
Does your company have vehicles that it uses and needs to take care of? In honor of National Car Care Month, we’re providing you with a little reminder to make sure your company’s cars are not root causes waiting to happen.
Mark Paradies tells a story in our Safety Clutter podcast episode about a company where a weak system led to just that (you can watch the video here).
In this story, he talks about a company car where the procedure was to check the oil every time you drove it.
This was obviously an unreasonable expectation, but it was also an impossible one. The company did not provide a rag to perform oil checks, nor did it provide oil if the oil needed changed. Nobody was even made aware that this was supposed to be a regular part of their job, and the only indication that it should be done was a small sticker on the dashboard that said to “check the oil.”
Thus, the oil ran out, and this example of normalization of deviation came to its natural conclusion.
It’s a great story about how a rule that is too strict or too loose (or in this case, simultaneously both) can effectively become useless “safety clutter.” But it can also serve as a reminder to us to look at our systems to see if our vehicles are being appropriately maintained.
Because vehicle maintenance is necessary less often than every day, it can be easy to forget. If you use cars at your company, does your system make it clear who is responsible for car care? Are the materials on hand for those responsible to be able to perform necessary maintenance or checks?
If your answer is “no,” and your company regularly has difficulties with car maintenance issues, it might be time to start a Root Cause Analysis of the issue. That’s where we come in!
TapRooT® RCA is a world renowned system that helps you find real root causes and prevent incidents from recurring (or happening in the first place). If you’re interested in learning how to improve the system at your workplace, you can contact us for a free briefing here.
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