Inside Intel

The semiconductor mega-company lowered its injury/illness rate to .19 and is now setting its sites on zero. How does your safety record stack up?

by Paul V. Arnold

The average U.S. manufacturing company records nine work-related injuries or illnesses each year for every 100 full-time employees.

Nine out of 100.

Are those acceptable odds for you and your co-workers?

Whether you find comfort or discomfort in that statistic, consider that Intel Corporation, the world’s largest maker of semiconductor chips, has an injury/illness rate of .19 per 100 employees.

That’s point-19, and encompasses 85,000 Intel workers at plants in the United States and 50 other countries.

Put a different way, with the current rate, a given group of 100 Intel employees would see nine work-related injuries or illnesses in 47.25 years.

How about those odds?

Why are Intel plant employees so much safer than you?

While there are pluses to working in high tech — no two-story cauldrons of molten metal or whirring monoliths that mix, chop or slice — it is far from a hazard-free business. The intricate manufacturing process involves an assortment of chemicals (including sulfuric and hydrochloric acid) and gases. Plant employees operate and maintain high-voltage machinery. Shipping and receiving docks are prone to material handling issues. And, assembly and office work can trigger repetitive motion disorders.

Those are reasons why the average semiconductor and computer products company approaches 2 injuries or illnesses per 100 employees, and that the average electronics manufacturer comes in at 5.7 per 100.

“If you think this is a no-hazard industry, talk to Dow and Du Pont, which handle some pretty dangerous stuff day in and day out,” says Jim Wick, an Intel corporate environmental, health and safety manager and a former Du Pont manager. “We face the same sort of hazards.”

MRO Today visited Intel’s Arizona manufacturing operations to find out its secrets to becoming more than 4,500 percent safer than the average manufacturer, and why it thinks “zero incidents, zero injuries” is not just a goal, but a possibility.

Embracing paranoia
The saying goes that some companies talk about safety and others do something about it. Intel engineered a third category, those that obsess about safety.

The company bombards workers and visitors with safety messages from the time they enter a facility to the time they leave it.

Placards offering safety tips are found in nearly every hallway. Safety scores and incident totals are posted on every bulletin board. And, (this is 100 percent true) safety newsletters are posted inside every bathroom stall and above every urinal.

“Getting the same message out to everybody in the same way is a challenge at this large of a facility,” says Dane Parker, corporate services site manager for the 6 million-square-foot Arizona operations, which includes facilities in Chandler and Ocotillo. “We flood people with as many sources as we can to keep that awareness up.”

Parker chalks it up to Intel culture.

“One of our founders, (current chairman) Andy Grove, said, ‘Only the paranoid survive.’  We have this mind-set that, when things are going real well, we are convinced there is something we are missing or that something is going to change,” says Parker. “As this has truly become a part of individual employees’ culture and their lives, it becomes less important to keep reminding them about it. But at the same token, it is serious enough that we are afraid to stop reminding them. It’s one of those things that we never want anybody to take for granted.”

Every injury is serious. Every injury is personal. That’s why Parker has no problem recounting the details of every manufacturing injury that has occurred this year at Intel Arizona. He is, however, helped by the fact that only two people (out of 3,760 production/ manufacturing workers) have been injured, and that the incidents have been more comical than critical.

“A chair broke when an employee was sitting on it, giving that person a strained back,” he says. “In the other one, an employee carrying something saw someone in his peripheral vision. He turned to miss the person and strained his back.”

That’s it. There is nothing on the books for chemical burns; electrical shock or burns; forklift accidents; musculoskeletal disorders; or injuries to the eye, head, hand, knee, neck or wrist.

Parker says there are three keys to achieving this type of safety success, and any manufacturing company can apply them. They are:

1) Management commitment
2) Employee commitment
3) Sustainable programs

Management commitment
Parker says Intel began applying its paranoia for perfection to the area of safety in the mid-1990s, and it was led by current chief executive officer Craig Barrett.

“We realized the path that we were on wasn’t getting us where we really wanted to go. We were very middle of the road in both our industry and in manufacturing in general,” says Parker. “About that time, Craig (who was then Intel’s chief operating officer) stood up and said, ‘Hey, what do we need to do in order to be the best in the world at this?’”

Barrett’s question served as a rallying cry for Intel managers, including himself, to get more involved in improving safety. As is the Intel culture, it became an obsession.

Barrett made cameo appearances in company safety training videos, usually playing the role of the unsafe worker. His memos to employees included at least some mention of safety. And, he grilled managers during performance reviews about their safety records.

Others followed suit.

Company vice presidents started visiting plants to have lunch with line managers and hourly workers and get their thoughts on safety strengths, weaknesses and opportunities.

“That really got the message out to all employees that this was something that not only their manager cared about, but their manager’s manager cared about,” says Parker.

Senior leaders started to meet regularly to review trends, patterns, incidents and gaps, and best practices and trouble spots were communicated to all Intel locations.

“We built a client/server-based tool called EHS (Environmental, Health and Safety) Workstation,” says Wick. “All incidents are entered into it. The information not only recaps the investigation, but serves as a fix-it note to all other sites. All sites must review the information, and if it applies to them, they have to deal with it and fix it. That helps eliminate repeat incidents.”

Wick and Parker provide an example of Workstation’s power.

A maintenance technician called in to do electrical work on a piece of production machinery performed his usual lockout routine. As he started his maintenance task, another worker noticed a spark and yelled for him to stop the job.

“The tech started hunting for a secondary power source and, sure enough, there was one that wasn’t identified beforehand,” says Wick.

The incident report and revised electrical safety procedures were quickly sent to all Intel managers.

“It became required learning for the rest of us,” says Parker.

Employee commitment
With management committed and obsessed, Intel’s injury/illness rate improved to a world-class .8 per 100 employees by 1997. But managers acknowledged that lasting success and “best of the best” status would be impossible without equal pull from hourly workers.

Employees more than accepted the challenge. It all started with a management-created program called SMBWA, or safety management by walking around.

“It’s amazing the amount of stuff that goes ignored,” says electrical engineering technician Tony Martinez III. “That’s where this came from. It gets you to open your eyes. If you are out and about and see a hazard or unsafe practice, write it down and submit it (to your supervisor or at any small- or large-group meeting).”

The appropriate department — maintenance, production, EHS, etc. — can then address the issue.

But SMBWA isn’t just about pinpointing deficiencies. It’s also a way to give a pat on the back to workers, managers and departments that initiate safety improvements or exercise proper safety practices.

Individual participation expanded into team-based initiatives.

One of these, a management idea, led to the formation of teams that attack different areas of risk within departments and plant areas.

At Intel Arizona, 15 teams address production floor safety concerns. Each consists of more than a dozen hourly workers (including two serving as a team chairperson and vice chairperson) and one management sponsor. The manager’s job is simply to provide resources and eliminate roadblocks.

“The manager will offer up a problem in a given area, and the team will brainstorm and come back with solutions,” says Parker.

The team leaders compile all of the documentation, make decisions on solutions and lead implementation on the necessary process changes. They wrap up a project by filling out a process control document that lists all changes, the reasons behind the changes and the expected results from the changes.

One team project worked to standardize an area’s selection and usage practices for hard hats and other pieces of personal protective equipment. Best practices such as these are shared at a plant’s manufacturing safety team meeting.

Intel Arizona employees created another team-based initiative — ESST, or employee-sponsored safety team — in 1999. Its focus is twofold:
1) address the areas not covered by traditional safety teams or EHS managers; and,
2) promote safety awareness and participation.

An ESST focusing on communication provides forums where workers can express concerns or ask questions to subject matter experts.

Another focuses on parking lot safety, which makes sense when you consider the dangers when thousands of cars arrive and leave the lot with each shift.

Thanks to SMBWA and teams, Parker states that 60 percent of his site’s employees are “actively participating in some way to improve safety.”

This employee commitment helped improve Intel’s injury/illness rate to .46 for 1998, .3 for 1999, .26 for 2000 and .19 for 2001.

Sustainable programs
Programs — some simple, some complex — are just as important to achieving sparkling safety numbers.

Among complex programs, safety is engineered into the design of plant systems and machinery.

An internal example is isolating, double-enveloping and labeling all pipes that contain dangerous chemicals. Double-enveloping assures chemical containment in the event of pipe leakage.

An external example is working with equipment suppliers. Intel holds a design conference each year to discuss safety, quality and cost issues with these companies. One-on-one talks are also utilized.

“We’ve asked suppliers to change their designs,” says external affairs manager Gary Niekerk. “We’ll tell them, ‘The panels are too heavy. You need to cut each into two pieces so our employees can lift them off for maintenance.’”

Additionally, Intel safety managers work with suppliers to improve that supplier’s safety performance. That, in turn, improves the supplier’s bottom line and can mean better prices down the road for Intel.

Among simple solutions, Intel cross-trains a large percentage of its production employees and incorporates some job rotation.

“If there are issues with a task, we’ll rotate people within that area,” says manufacturing technician Lee Woodruff.

Stretching exercises prior to the work shift also address potential ergonomic issues.

Absolute zero
Intel programs and involvement have driven its injury/illness rate close to zero. So, what does it do for an encore? The company wonders the same thing.

“We are in uncharted waters right now,” says Niekerk. “We are the best — far better than anybody else — and we have those discussions internally. We’ve even had people ask us if we are doing too good of a job, if we are spending too much time on this.”

The company is quick to respond.

“How many people getting hurt is ‘doing too good’?” asks Wick. “If I believe that some incidents or some injuries are non-preventable, where does it stop? If I believe that about one, I will believe that about two and three. At some point, I compromise my entire attitude toward the value of an Intel employee’s life.”

To paraphrase, Wick won’t be happy until the rate hits absolute zero — zero incidents, zero injuries.

“Is that a goal or a possibility? It’s both,” he says.

Wick and Parker think Intel employees hold the keys.

“We have to unleash the creativity,” he says. “We have an incredibly creative workforce, 85,000 strong. That’s where the new ideas will come from.”

Parker concurs because he feels employees have adopted the safety message, both on the job and off.

As he tells it, an Intel employee wears safety glasses while mowing the lawn. An Intel employee wears a helmet while riding a bike or a motorcycle. An Intel employee always buckles up. And, an Intel employee always holds the handrail while using the stairs.

“Are they living it? I knew we were there when Craig Barrett got the CEO job from Andy Grove (in May 1997),” says Parker. “The TV cameras were rolling as they came down a set of stairs after the meeting. The day after the five-second clip was aired, Craig got 150 e-mails from employees telling him that he wasn’t holding the handrail.”

This article appeared in the August/September 2002 issue of MRO Today magazine. Copyright 2002.

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