Best Practices: Cascade Steel Rolling Mills Inc.
Background
Cascade Steel is a wholly owned subsidiary of Schnitzer Steel Industries located in McMinnville, Oregon. They have about 550 employees at the site. The company's steel operations use a technologically advanced mini-mill to make steel reinforcing bar (rebar), merchant bar, coiled rebar, coiled wire rod, and other products such as fence posts, grape stakes, and special sections.
Improve safety training, reduce training no-shows
Cascade Steel set out to improve their safety training about four years ago using a technology that was relatively new at the time—interactive multimedia training. Dru Silva, a safety professional for Cascade Steel, was there at the beginning of the implementation.
"Like a lot of companies, we were delivering safety training to our workers in a large group setting. This was the traditional way of delivering safety training," says Silva. "There were several problems associated with this: people would nod off during the training, it was difficult to deliver a consistent message, and some workers would miss the class because they were not available on the scheduled training date. Our ultimate goal at Cascade Steel, is to have an accident-free workplace. Safety training, if workers are really learning the material, can contribute a great deal towards that goal. However, we felt like our workers weren't getting much out of the stand-up, videotape training that we were previously using. The other big problem was having to schedule a class for the training no-shows.
When we first heard about interactive multimedia training we were pretty excited about the potential benefits. We were using a lot of technology in computer-controlled mill operations and thought that technology could help us in the training area as well."
Improved training
"We decided to give it a try. The first systems installed were 486 computers equipped with CD-ROM drives. These older computers needed a special video card to play the full motion video. We set up two standalone systems in a training room, and we had a "traveling" unit that was rotated throughout the offices. We purchased courses from Mastery Technologies to train workers on Forklift Safety, Confined Space Entry, Lockout Tagout, Environmental Awareness, Fall Protection, Fire Safety, Hearing Conservation, Hazard Communications, Personal Protective Equipment, and Lead Safety."
Increased worker's knowledge on safety
"The courses use full-screen, full-motion video to deliver the training. The workers actually participate in the training with real world activities and interactions. After the workers watch the video lessons, the system quizzes them to make sure that they learned the material. When they miss questions during the quiz, the system will replay the video related to that question. The system continues to review until each worker reaches 100%. This really helped us increase our employee's knowledge of safety which was one of our primary objectives."
Early challenges: Administration problem and solution
"One of the problems we had in the beginning, was combining the records of the training stations. With three stand-alone training stations, we had to transfer the records from each of the systems to a main database on my desktop computer. We wanted a single database that would contain all of the records."
"We solved this problem by connecting each of the training stations to the network. The results were fantastic. We no longer had to worry about combining all of the records because they were now in one database on the network. So it became very easy to print consolidated reports. When we networked the training we were also able to take advantage of some of Mastery's Training Manager features. One feature that works particularly well is Training Requirements. Training Requirements allows us to assign courses to specific workers or groups of workers based on their job requirements. For example, we setup our workers into seven departments: Fence Post, Maintenance, Melt Shop, Rolling Mill, Yard, Shipping and Merchant Bar. Each of these departments was assigned its own training curriculum. So when a worker from the Yard signs on to take a course, they only see a list of courses required for a Yard worker. This sign-on screen also shows them when the training is due and which courses they have already completed. So by simply logging on to take a course, the worker sees what they are required to take, when it's due, and which courses they have already completed. It will even remind them again next year when they need to take a refresher course."
"As an administrator I am able to manage the training right from my office. I can enroll workers into courses, print reports and make training assignments without having to go to the training computers and interrupt the training. With the STARS recordkeeping program, I am able to see who has taken the training, when they took the training and even how many minutes they spent in training. It also keeps track of the scores. I can even get a list of who hasn't been trained with an exception report."
Handling CD-ROMs: problem and solution
"Another problem we anticipated was keeping up with the CD-ROMs and workers mishandling the CD-ROMs. We talked with Mastery about this issue and came up with a solution. Newer computers were coming out with big hard drives and faster processors. We upgraded to Pentium computers with 9GB hard drives. These newer computers didn't require the special video cards so they were easier to install. Mastery also has a feature that allowed us to install our entire library of courses to the hard drive. This made the training much easier to administer. Our workers never have to handle the CD-ROMs. This eliminated the problem of damaged or lost CD-ROMs."
No more no-shows
"We are a 24/7 operation. We operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. So, we really had a tough time getting everyone through the classroom-based training. With the interactive training the workers were able to train around the clock, without having to wait for a training class. The training is available when the workers are and the computer knows what training each worker needs. Problem solved."
What's next?
"We are currently working with Mastery's Modify™ program to customize the courses to match our site-specific requirements. For example, we are removing some content from the Lead Safety course that doesn't apply to our mill operations. We are also customizing the Lockout Tagout program to show specific lockout procedures in the Melt Shop. We are also planning to use Shells to develop some custom courses from scratch. Our plan here is to create some basic orientation programs that only apply to Cascade Steel."
