A new drive for EHS management

8 minutes

How can a corporate group with global operations reach the highest safety standards and achieve global legal conformity? Is it possible to integrate all occupational health and safety and environmental management processes across all locations – regardless of local differences in terms of language, management and EHS culture?

Confronted with these questions, Austrian industrial and technological company Miba set out to define its requirements for a suitable EHS software. By opting for Quentic, Miba obtained a platform that allows each of its 7,500 employees to contribute to reaching the company’s key health and safety targets. Increasing incident reports, reducing the accident rate to below 1 percent and implementing standardized EHS processes were among the major achievements, along with ensuring legal compliance and health and safety during the coronavirus pandemic.

About Miba AG

Miba has more than 30 production facilities and sales locations across Europe, North America, South America and Asia. Treating people, nature and societies at large with respect is a vital issue for the technology group. Miba’s mission – “Technologies for a cleaner planet” – relates not only to its products, which make machines more efficient and environmentally friendly, but also to its internal processes, which it is continuously optimizing to conserve resources. In addition, structuring all processes to be as low-risk as possible for its employees and the entire ecosystem and ensuring legal conformity in every respect are key focuses of Miba’s occupational health and safety activities. The company’s global scope calls for a holistic overview of all EHS topics. Miba achieves this through its use of Quentic, an integrated software solution that makes it possible to visualize complex structures and draw connections between them.

Introducing the software: A strategic change process

“We were faced with the immense challenge of persuading employees around the globe to adopt changes and report incidents independently. Simply purchasing and providing them with an EHS software would not have been enough. Introducing the software was a strategic change process, which required a great deal of sensitivity and active communication.”

Franz Almhofer-Amering is Corporate EHS & Facility Manager at Miba and oversaw the strategic implementation of Quentic. Integrating local EHS experts as key users at an early stage and including all other employees and locations in a gradual, solution-oriented process proved to be the key to success. Miba initially tested and optimized all Quentic modules at its Austrian site, where EHS management and safety culture were already well developed. Based on the experiences of its experts in Austria, Miba pressed ahead with the global roll-out of Quentic, including adapting the modules to specific local circumstances. Almhofer-Amering made introducing the Health & Safety module across all locations and standardizing processes accordingly the first part of this process. During this phase, in which every decision has wide-reaching consequences and is difficult to reverse, Miba drew on the support of a specialist Quentic consultant.

Health & Safety

All Miba employees around the world have touchpoints with the topic of incident management in their day-to-day work. For this reason, Almhofer-Amering opted for the Health & Safety module for the first round of group-wide process standardization. The software’s ease of operation and integrated multi-language features made it possible to reduce the impact of what had previously been barriers to progress. The change in reporting behavior was equally positive and helped to establish a constructive culture of failure.

In Miba’s first few years using Quentic and since defining common standards in the areas of cause analysis, risk assessment and formulating measures, the company successfully reduced the number of reportable accidents per 1,000 employees from 12 to 7. This prevented approximately 40 serious accidents.

Hazardous Chemicals

Miba sees EHS management as a service that needs a single interface connecting all processes in order to break down silo mentalities and reach every single member of staff. This requires the maximum possible transparency, particularly in relation to hazardous chemicals – and Miba has achieved this since introducing Quentic. The software allows all employees to access all safety data sheets in all languages, which means they can find up-to-date information quickly at any time.

At the same time, the individually configurable inspection and approval processes systematically record the use of hazardous chemicals and ensure that their use is limited to specific applications and persons. Other departments also benefit from this increased transparency. For example, Miba’s Purchasing department can use the Quentic software to check which staff members are authorized to order certain materials.

Global legal conformity

One of the most significant challenges for Miba’s global operations is the fast-paced dynamization and transformation of the compliance world. Thanks to Quentic’s international partner network, the Miba Group can successfully fulfill all local requirements. The legal inventory for Miba’s Austrian location, for example, is regularly reviewed and updated by a local partner. Miba uses the Regulatory Forecaster Service provided by Quentic partner Enhesa to stay abreast of issues internationally. This ensures Miba is immediately informed of any regulatory amendments and adjustments. Not only does Miba now have an eye on its legal obligations, it can also use dashboards and analytic tools to generate documentation valid for legal purpose in relation to any query.

Navigating the COVID-19 pandemic with Quentic

In the spring of 2020, two-thirds of all Miba employees worked at a location equipped with Quentic software. Following the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic, the Quentic software solution proved its worth, with use of the Risks & Audits module made compulsory Group-wide for COVID-19 safety inspections. Beyond safeguarding occupational health and safety and ensuring legal certainty around the globe during the crisis, this measure also accelerated the software solution’s international roll-out. Locations that, until then, had little or no experience of working with Quentic then inquired about further potential applications of the software. The pandemic therefore brought about the digitalization and standardization of EHS processes at Miba more swiftly than originally planned. “The positive feedback from our international colleagues has confirmed that we made the right choice. We will now provide further functionalities for our other locations beyond our Austrian site,” says Almhofer-Amering.