Celebrating Safety!

Attention to small details can yield big results. We’re celebrating one right now!

Max Weiss Company recently surpassed a year as an injury-free metal forming, steel fabrication  and metal rolling workplace. For more than 365 days (and counting), not a single team member missed work due to injury, nor suffered a reported injury.

This doesn’t happen by accident (pun intended). In an industrial setting, with powerful equipment and heavy materials, people can get hurt. Preventing injuries, especially for an extended time, requires concerted training and, even more, instilling a cooperative mindset focused on safe operations.

Dave Gregg, our Director of Operations, initiated a new safety program in early 2018. He named Antonio Hernandez as Safety Coordinator – the point person in implementing new safety-related processes, and ensuring that everyone is aware of them.

Antonio spent the past year updating policies and procedures covering cranes, forklifts and personal protective equipment (PPE). He led a shop meeting to improve safety awareness, and worked to reinforce a safety culture.

Its slogan: “A Safer You is a Safer Us.”

“This slogan means that we are one team, and safety starts with you as an individual,” Antonio explains. “Being a smaller company, if one person gets hurt, we all feel it.”

Antonio oversees the safety program. Dave approves any changes, which are passed to the production supervisors. Everyone has a say in making things work.

Some PPE is standard on the shop floor: safety glasses, steel-toe boots and ear protection. Employees doing metal fabrication hot work (welding fabrication, torch cutting, hot forming) wear protective sleeves and leather gloves.

What does the injury-free achievement mean to our customers? Antonio believes it demonstrates care for our employees - which translates into taking pride in what we do, and who does it for us.

“I’ve always believed quality and safety go hand in hand, so we take the time to ensure they have a quality part the safest way possible,” he says. “We give our best to our customers and our employees!”

We’re thrilled to flip the calendar on an injury-free year. Of our many strong results achieved recently, it certainly ranks among the best.