June 18, 2024

Forest City Gear has renewed their contract with Safety Management & Training in Southern Wisconsin. Since 2014, Safety Management & Training has served as point of contact for employee safety questions and facilitated safety training, safety auditing, workers’ compensation, injury investigation, and safety policy implementation for Forest City Gear.

Ted Flynn, Owner of Safety Management & Training, takes the lead for training, auditing, and policy execution at Forest City Gear.

“Safety used to be one of those things that kept me up at night,” says Kika Young, President of Forest City Gear. “Since hiring Ted and his team these worries are completely obsolete. If there’s a near miss, a general safety concern, or anything else, we just call Ted who begins the investigation and provides with the best options that create the safest work environment possible for our team.”

“Anytime you have people working with machines, you have concerns for ‘struck-by’ injuries and ‘pinch points’ during set-up of jobs,” says Flynn. “Controlling hazardous energy when machines are in need of service is another condition that leads to people taking short cuts or being in a hurry to get the machine back into service.” Correctly handling heavy and slippery parts and keeping proper housekeeping are two additional dangers especially prevalent in manufacturing environments. Establishing and maintaining proper training and procedures is the best way to prevent incidents in the shop.

“Safety Management & Training does monthly general employee training for us on everything from Lock-Out Tag-Out to Active Shooter to Proper Lifting. We have them do specialized training for certain groups like maintenance or forklift use. They also do monthly unplanned audits on safety as well as intermediate safety security ‘breach’ attempts,” says Young. “It’s like preventative maintenance for all things safety! Employee safety is and a safe work environment is of utmost importance to us, and Ted and his team are able to ensure that.”

As an example of what results can be obtained when good management support joins with safety implementation, Forest City Gear has worked more than one million man hours without a lost time injury.