Disaster prevention initiatives
Nippon Steel finds that the harmonious coexistence with customers, communities, and society is most precious.
Prevention of disaster, which may harm our credibility, is important for continuation of our company. We therefore aim at enhancing disaster prevention management by establishing a structure of autonomous, continual activities, and taking measures to reduce disaster risks and prevent disaster occurrence.
Initiatives to reduce disaster risks
Nippon Steel’s Plant Safety Division is promoting initiatives for risk reduction in disaster prevention by working in three areas of focus
- corporate-wide implementation of measures against risks that emerge from instances of disaster, to prevent recurrence.
- identification of disaster occurrence risks based on risk assessment plant by plant and by each of their process technology divisions; and implementation of tangible/intangible measures to reduce risks and control residual risks.
- voluntary monitoring (auditing) concerning appropriate implementation of 1) and 2), by persons in charge of disaster prevention in each works.
understanding of the control status through sessions with managers at the head office; and implementation of corrections, if needed.
Targeting zero serious disaster-related accidents, we promote essential disaster prevention improvement measures in manufacturing sites.
Specific disaster prevention initiatives
- Prevention of disaster recurrence (mitigating risks exposed by disaster)
- Enhance drills for initial response (drills at all plants in all steelworks; enhanced drill programs; use of dedicated training facilities, improvement of hazard sensitivity by use of CG, etc.)
- Improve fire-fighting capacity of the in-house fire defense function, in cooperation with experts (joint fire drilling with public fire fighters; training for leaders, etc.)
- Prevent forgetting past incidents and accidents (panel presentations in training facilities; session to learn about past incidents during training)
- Disaster prevention risk assessment (identification of new potential disaster risk)
- Identify and assess risks in manufacturing sites based on the corporate-wide guidelines; manage residual risks; and develop and promote permanent measures
- Identify accident risks related to operating processes and facility design and promote the drafting of permanent measures by outside experts and the process technology division in the head office
- Strengthen disaster prevention management in the facility measures of the Medium to Long-Term Management Plan
- Measures to mitigate existing risks (measures for disaster prevention equipment)
- Prevent disaster recurrence; investment in measures for compliance and risk assessment
- Auditing concerning disaster prevention
- Voluntary monitoring by disaster prevention organization at each steelworks for regular check-ups and corrective action on the status of disaster prevention activities at the manufacturing work front
- Regular check-up and corrective action on the implementation status of disaster prevention management of each steelworks based on the hearings in the head office
- Third-party monitoring toward enhancing safety competency in steelworks
- Assessment of steelworks by an NPO, the Japan Safety Competence Center
- Measures against earthquakes and tsunami and measures for natural disaster mitigation
- Promote measures against earthquakes in the order of 1) human injury prevention, 2) area damage prevention, and 3) production measures
- Prepare procedures and devise measures for disaster mitigation to the nine categories of natural disasters (earthquakes, tsunamis, typhoons, heavy rains, floods, lightning, landslide disasters, blizzards, volcanic eruptions)
- Group companies disaster prevention management
- Meetings to enhance coordination for disaster prevention management; individual visits to a workplace where a disaster or accident happened or which has risks related to disaster prevention
Activities
Efforts to prevent occurrence and recurrence of accidents
As part of disaster prevention efforts, we conduct activities to prevent occurrence and recurrence of accidents.
For occurrence prevention (initial response training), we have identified approximately 800 high-risk facilities and operations across the Company and conduct training to deal with them. This makes our training more practical. There are 90 best practices of initial response training developed by different workshops, which are shared across the Company to upgrade the training in each workplace.
For recurrence prevention, in addition to the corporate-wide disaster risk assessment guidelines, we have established and standardized disaster risk assessment guidelines that particularly address the launch of new facilities and the temporary/permanent removal of production lines as part of our ongoing actions to manage emerging risks from changes in the production status.
Since the formation of the Plant Safety Division in 2014, our infrastructure for company-wide safety management (standardization) has been strengthened, as demonstrated by the fact that no serious disaster-related accidents have occurred since 2019. In addition to building such infrastructure (standardization), we will implement initiatives to support manufacturing sites disaster prevention activities, including those conducted by managers, to make our disaster prevention activities sustainable through the spread and enhancement of safety culture.