OCCUPATIONAL HEALTH & SAFETY
Occupational health and safety (OHS) ranks the first among the elements of Tofaş’s, since it is the most important one. It is also an area in many aspects of which the Tofaş plant serves as a reference model within the Stellantis community. The plant is visited by firms wishing to observe Tofaş’s OHS operations and practices in action. Adhering to a proactive and lean WCM-based approach to occupational health and safety issues, Tofaş seeks to protect everyone coming into contact with its operations from risks that could be detrimental to their health or safety by fostering a sustainable OHS culture and by creating environments that are intrinsically safe.
TARGET: ZERO ACCIDENTS AND OCCUPATIONAL DISEASES
Tofaş strives to maximize OHS awareness not just among its own employees but also among its trainees, visitors, suppliers, and contractors. To this end, Tofaş commits itself to:
- Fulfilling all of its OHS-related statutory and other obligations;
- Abiding by the principle that all employees have a shared responsibility for contributing to continual-improvement processes;
- Soliciting the opinions of all personnel about OHS practices and ensuring participation in them;
- Reducing OHS risks by eliminating OHS threats;
- Continually improving OHS targets.
Tofaş makes use of an OHS Management System in order to achieve zero work-related accident and illness rates. Since the beginning of the company’s campaign to continuously improve workplace safety performance, the Lost Time Accident Rate has decreased by 90%. The biggest contributor to a vigorous OHS culture is employee training and OHS training is always a matter of the highest priority at Tofaş. In 2022 4,517 employees received a total of 36,948 hours of OHS training.
MESS Work Safety Stars award
In the year’s round of “Work Safety Stars” awards given out by the Turkish Employers’ Association of Metal Industries (MESS), Tofaş’s “VR Forklift Simulator” project earned its Bursa plant a place among the top three contenders in the “Innovation In Communication” category. A trainee forklift operator wearing a VR headset in conjunction with the simulator can experiment with potential near miss incidents and get a clearer and more immediate understanding of the risks involved in driving a forklift in the real world.
