安全面的工作开展
Safety Assurance and Disaster Prevention
At Kuraray, we consider it our major responsibility to prevent the occurrence of explosions, fires, leakage of hazardous substances, and other accidents and disasters that could have an immense impact on society, as well as to curtail the damage in the event of any occurrence to the minimum level. For risk management to this end, we are placing particular emphasis on safety inspections and change management when installing new equipment or remodeling existing equipment and when changing operating conditions and other factors. In addition, we have mounted companywide approaches in areas such as risk assessment related to safety and disaster prevention (based on HAZOP*, etc), quake-proofing measures for buildings and plants, conditioning of the security management system for facilities, and disaster-response drills.
In April 2008, one employee at a subcontracting company suffered serious burns in an accident in which a high-voltage electrical cable was cut, and our Okayama Plant temporarily discontinued operations as a result. Taking a lesson from this accident, we made a review of the safety management system in construction work encompassing subcontracting companies, formulated Guidelines for Construction Safety Management in Outsourced Work, and instated regulations for their application throughout the company.
In fiscal 2008, there were a total of three fires and other accidents (including the one noted above) within the Kuraray Group. At the locations where these incidents occurred, we conducted a special six-month disasterprevention campaign revolving around designated priority tasks, which included a recheck of facilities and work methods and heightening of safety awareness.
- * HAZOP
Hazard and Operability Study: A technique for the drafting and analysis of scenarios for hazards in chemical processes.
Security and Safety-related Accidents in Fiscal 2008 (Domestic Plants)
We believe that the safety level in the Kuraray Group is steadily rising along with the strengthening of our safety management system, but it is still not high enough to reduce the number of accidents to zero and keep it there. In fiscal 2009, our key tasks are instatement of the Safety Level Evaluation System to gauge the growth of a safety culture and bolstering of our security management system to reduce safety-related accidents to zero.
General Disaster-prevention Drills
Joint disaster-prevention drill at the Kashima Plant with the public fire department and the joint petrochemical complex emergency team on the assumption of an earthquake
Each location organizes emergency teams and regularly conducts drills. In fiscal 2008, all domestic plants of the Kuraray Group carried out such drills (for a total of twelve times with about 3,000 participants) on the assumption of various situations, including occurrence of fires, leaks, and earthquakes at night.
