By Aaron Marshall, Safety and Haz-Mat Coordinator for Dyna-Tek

Safety First. Second. And Third.

Safety should be a key concern for any company, and it certainly is at Dyna-Tek. We are a manufacturer of polymer coatings such as Mold (tooling) Sealers and Release coatings that are used in a number of industries including aerospace, where Dyna-Tek is a certified supplier to companies like Spirit AeroSystems and Boeing.

While Dyna-Tek’s 100% accident-free workplace for the past 10 years was pretty hard to argue with, Management argued that success often leads to complacency. To Management’s point, the accident-free record at Dyna-Tek was more the result of the Culture versus as Deming would say, the “Processes”.

Since taking over the Haz-Mat shipping responsibilities for Dyna-Tek earlier this year, I was also tasked with updating the safety processes and procedures of our entire manufacturing process flow from raw material receipt to outgoing shipping.

W. Edward Deming, one of the most respective minds in Quality Management of the last century said, “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”

Process Flow Cycle

Working with my co-worker; Wes Weidman who oversees the production quality we analyzed our “process flow cycle” for areas where safety factors came into play and developed various checks and balances and corresponding measurable metrics that tied back to analyzing our safety practices. Being new to the company, I provided a fresh set of eyes. I could ask the kinds of questions those that already knew how we did it might not think to ask. All said and done, this collaboration produced a lot of good improvements not only for Safety, but to our processes overall.

This translates into faster order turnaround, and more detailed and accurate information for our customers. It is important to avoid any sort of delays due to regulatory issues, misused materials, or delayed shipments.

Some of Dyna-Tek’s products are classified as hazardous materials when shipped by carriers. So documenting our products also entails including a “Certificate of Conformance” (C of C) which essentially certifies that we have produced the product as being made to the exact standards as all previous production batches.

Safety Documents and Technical Bulletins

We are currently focusing on improving our technical bulletins and safety documents. We will update those on our website by the end of the year. In the meantime, the existing documents can be found in our DOWNLOADS section of our website at this link here.