Crown Worland plant earns top safety honors

WORLAND - The Crown Cork & Seal Worland plant recently completed a two-year partnership with the Crown Corporate Environmental Health and Safety Department and is the only plant in North America to complete the health and safety partnership.

According to Plant EHS Manager and Quality Manager Tyler Lockard, "Our plant has recently achieved a very high award within our company (EHS World Class Partnership). Crown Worland is the first beverage plant in North America to ever complete this partnership."

The partnership is a two-year "agreement" with Crown's Corporate EHS Department, Lockard explained.

"In this agreement, the plant underwent additional quarterly audits, completed multiple safety projects, planned out a success roadmap comprised of hundreds of goals and rectified more than 700 safety deficiencies. We also kept the plant's OSHA [Office of Safety and Health Administration] Recordable Injury Rate below 2.0, among other things. Ultimately our goal is to keep 100% of our employees safe, 100% of the time," Lockard said.

He said during the quarterly audits, they look for any deficiency under this partnership, including things such as trip hazards.

Lockard said the partnership was successful thanks to the employees, Plant Manager Mitch Riley, Matt Robertson, EHS manager for the first year of the partnership; and Dustin Vail, plant superintendent. Lockard was the EHS manager for the second year and has moved into the quality manager role awaiting his replacement later this month for the EHS manager position.

On Thursday, Sept. 2, Lockard said the plant had been 532 days without a lost-time injury. He said the Worland plant achievement of that milestone that continues today was reached by the efforts of their employees, with or without the EHS partnership; however, that the EHS partnership "helped us keep our employees safe and contribute to that success.

He said the plant has also submitted over 10 "worldwide best practices." He explained that Worland has submitted more than 10 projects to improve processes in the safety realm. One of those such projects is the lock out-tag out quick reference map.

"We have a lot of huge equipment with multiple sources of hazardous energy that sometimes needs locked out and it is not always easy to locate where the lock out is on that particular piece," Lockard said.

He explained that he developed a legend that dictates where all lock-out points are on the equipment for quick reference. The actual lock-out points are also accompanied by a large color coordinated arrow that correlates with the legend.

"It takes any question out of it," he said.

He said they have also instituted daily safety topics as a part of the morning management team meetings. "Every single meeting and every day starts with safety," Lockard said.

Crown Cork and Seal began in 1892 with the Worland plant opening in 1978. The 151,000 square foot plant on Fourth Street in Worland holds roughly 30 million 12-ounce cans in inventory and the plant makes about 4 million cans every 24 hours.

Lockard said they send about 20-22 semi loads out every 24 hours.

They supply beverage cans for the majority of the western United States for a variety of companies.

The plant has roughly 104 employees with 84 of them hourly employees and the rest management.

The Worland Plant was named Quality Plant of the Year in 2020 out of all of Crown's beverage plants. For two years in a row, 2019 and 2020, the plant earned the honor of being the cleanest plant as well. With the completion of the EHS partnership they are also the safest plant in Crown.

Public celebration for the honors were scheduled for next week but have been canceled due to the rise in COVID cases. Lockard said shift and department celebrations are planned within the plant.

Crown has committed and invested $12.6 million in equipment upgrades to the Worland plant with a full $26 million planned to upgrade equipment and speed up lines to meet production demands. The upgrades also include the addition of a machine shop which will allow expansion of the warehouse storage area.

There are four shifts operating the plant 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Production lines are shut down for 12 hours once a month for maintenance.

Lockard said, "We are always looking to add to our team, like every business. We care about our employees, keeping them safe and keeping them happy and always looking to add qualified people to our team."

Regarding the EHS partnership, Lockard concluded, "Our main mission is to keep 100% of our employees safe 100% of the time. By enrolling ourselves and holding ourselves to the higher standard for the past two-plus years that has helped us to accomplish that. We are very proud of achievements in cleaning up the plant, the quality of the plant and the safety and the culture in the plant."

They will have a plaque and a banner from Crown but Lockard said the biggest reward is being able to send employees home safe to their families.