2019年6月8日 星期六

DuPont的歷史與秘密

一直覺得談論到杜邦,台灣人好像把它神話了
而聽杜邦人描述公司的種種作為又好像見樹不見林/不知其所以然


杜邦家族的歷史與故事(1)
1802火藥起家,遇上南北戰爭(1861-1865, 發大財),極盛時期成為當時最大的火藥製造商,整個家族事業雇用了德拉瓦州10%的人口
介入政治與透過聯姻擴大事業版圖(第一波的成長)





摘錄:
In 1802, Éleuthère Irénée du Pont established a gunpowder mill on the banks of the Brandywine River near Wilmington, Delaware. The location (named Eleutherian Mills) provided all the necessities to operate the mill: a water flow sufficient to power it, available timber (mainly willow trees) that could be turned into charcoal fine enough to use for gunpowder, and close proximity to the Delaware River to allow for shipments of sulfur and saltpeter, the other ingredients used in the manufacture of gunpowder. There were also nearby stone quarries to provide needed building materials.

Over time, the Du Pont company grew into the largest black powder manufacturing firm in the world. The family remained in control of the company up through the 1960s,[9] and family trusts still own a substantial amount of the company's stock. This and other companies run by the du Pont family employed up to 10 percent of Delaware's population at its peak.[10] During the 19th century, the Du Pont family maintained their family wealth by carefully arranged marriages between cousins[11]which, at the time, was the norm for many families.

The family played a large part in politics during the 18th and 19th centuries and assisted in negotiations for the Treaty of Paris and the Louisiana purchase. Both T. Coleman and Henry A. du Pont served as U.S. senators, and Pierre S. du Pont, IV served as Governor of Delaware.


杜邦家族的歷史與故事(2)
第二波的成長:商業多角化、科技進展與兩次世界大戰
摘錄:
DuPont continued to grow by beginning the production of smokeless powder and dynamite. In 1902 the company was sold to the original founder's great-grandsons. At this time, DuPont bought several smaller chemical companies. These actions were under government scrutiny in 1912. DuPont was declared as a monopoly and was ordered to do a divestment. This resulted in the creation of the AstraZeneca and Hercules Power Companies. DuPont was responsible for creating two of the first industrial labs in the U.S. It is here that they began to work on lacquers, chemicals, cellulose chemistry, and other non-explosive products.

In 1914, DuPont invested in the automobile industry by buying General Motors stock. In 1920, General Motors became the number one automobile company in the world.

In 1957, DuPont was forced to divest its shares of General Motors. Before this in the 1920s, DuPont created a focus on materials science. Neoprene was discovered. Nylon followed in 1935. Years later DuPont discovered Teflon and Lucite.

In 1935 an insecticide known as phenothiazine was introduced. The company also continued to be a major supplier of war supplies.

DuPont played a major role in producing the material for parachutes, tires, and powder bags, In 1942, DuPont played large role in the Manhattan Project. They designed, built, and operated the Hanford plutonium plant along with the Savannah River Plant. DuPont continued its focus on new materials after the war. The development of Dacron, Mylar, Lycra, and Dacron came about in the 1950s. Tyvek, Qiana, Corian, and Nomex came about in the 1960s.

DuPont created materials that were critical to the Apollo Space program. DuPont has always been the major company behind modern body armor. DuPont created ballistic nylon that was used in the military during WWII. Kevlar came about in the 1960s as an experiment to find heavier bullet resistant material. This bullet resistant material became the mainstay for vests used by the police and military.

DuPont acquired Conoco Inc. in 1981. This American oil company gave DuPont a secure source of petroleum feedstocks. These were needed for manufacturing plastic and fiber products.

DuPont became one of the top ten U.S. natural gas and petroleum refiners and producers. This came about after bidding war with Seagram Company Ltd. DuPont sold its Conoco shares in 1999. They then merged with Phillips Petroleum Company. DuPont's focus began to lean toward producing chemicals from plants, rather than petroleum.

Today, DuPont is a global science company. It employs over 60,000 people around the world. The range of products that DuPont offers is very vast. It was in 2005 that DuPont became the 66th ranked Fortune 500 Company.


杜邦家族的歷史與故事(3)
對於安全的偏執源自於親身感受親人在事故中罹難

當年(1800+)不只杜邦家族成員死在火災爆炸,一次爆炸殺死40位勞工(這些勞工都是附近街坊鄰居啊!)連附近學校的孩童也受傷(杜邦家族成員政商關係不錯、成員也擔任公職...)=>有趣的大哉問是:杜邦家族為什麼執迷不悟不放棄火藥製造事業...(還好當年沒勞動法規,不然杜邦一定被稽查到關廠;而杜邦家族值得欽佩是身先士卒、以身作則)



當時(1800+)已經有建築安全的概念-三面石牆+一面木牆(面對無人的河岸)與天花板(對照一年前的敬鵬案例...)
They were constructed of three strong, stone walls, a weak fourth wall made of wood facing the river, plus a weak wooden roof that acted as a "safety valve". If an explosion occurred in the powder mill, the wooden roof and fourth wall would be blown out. The rest of the factory, and people within the factory, would be protected from the blast by the stone walls. The wooden wall faced the river so the boats were locked to the dock when production was in progress; DuPont's first lock out procedure. While this might not sound very impressive by today's safety standards, it was an extraordinarily innovative safety design at the time.

The first safety rules in DuPont were established in 1811 and even at that time, DuPont saw line management as responsible for Safety. DuPont first started collecting safety statistics in 1912.
 In 1815, an explosion cost the company $80,000, more than double the original investment in the entire company.
In 1817, they were faced with a more significant loss. Seventy-seven year old Pierre Samuel DuPont, the financial founder of the company, died after working all night to help fight a fire in the mill.
The following year, 1818, an explosion killed 40 workers and injured many children who were in the school building on the grounds at the time. Later, the death of one of the young favorites of the DuPont family, Alexis DuPont, in an explosion while fighting a fire on the wooden roof of a powder mill in 1857 also had a significant impact.

The belief that all injuries were preventable didn't actually develop until the 1940's. The "off the job safety" programs began in the 1950's. The standards for safety continued to evolve and became more demanding all the way to the 1990's at which time DuPont adopted the goal of zero injuries. Management had wrestled for years with the idea of setting this zero injuries goal but finally decided that if it was to be believed that all injuries are preventable, how could there be a goal of anything higher than zero.

The Key to Success

The key to success in the DuPont Safety Program is the deeply held belief that safety is everyone's responsibility - not one designated individual, team or department. Each person must be individually responsible for safety based on the position they hold and according to the circumstances they face. It is not good enough for a plant manager to search for people not wearing proper safety equipment. The plant manager must look at his duties and make judgments about what policies will lead to safe behaviors. This also includes policies about hiring, firing, and development of people along with policies on standards for design of equipment. Operators and mechanics also have individual safety responsibilities. They should not expect to wait for their boss to tell them to wear proper safety equipment. Discharging that responsibility takes courage to do what is right, integrity to not use safety as an excuse to avoid work or other unpleasantness, and to recognize that an incredible amount of persistence is required. Safety is never finished; you have to do it again and again, every day. This is something that must be learned through experience, but you don't have to wait until someone is hurt. It is important to create places to practice and drill people in safe behaviors like the training of fire fighters.


另外一些專家學者會引用Bradley Curve
其實背後的重點不是安全面向的他律自律自助互助;
而是在管理觀念上:從被動見招拆招=>到有計畫與組織=>再到精準與更好



想到財務管理上的杜邦公式,或許安全管理的重點是"管理(觀念)"而不是"安全"
A finance executive at E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co., of Wilmington, Delaware, created the DuPont system of financial analysis in 1919.


人家寫的歷史回顧與展望

安全最大的挑戰是如何面對景氣衰退與克服越來越大的阻力
The most severe challenge to the company’s safety focus might be expected to have occurred during the hard economic times of The Depression in the 1930s. However, the company’s efforts to understand and control the hazards of its processes continued:
Special studies are continually being made of the hazards arising out of the use of various materials or processes . . . Where sufficient information is not obtainable . . . experiments and tests are conducted . . ..
and the core value for safety was re-emphasized to maintain safety performance: The operations of the DuPont Company and subsidiary companies have for many years enjoyed enviable success in safety work; and we believe no other group of plants can point with equal pride to such a high degree of control over a multiplicity of inherent industrial hazards . . . As accidents are reduced, their further reduction becomes increasingly difficult.
Furthermore, several factors are present today, undoubtedly due to economic conditions, which make it imperative that our accident prevention work be materially increased particularly in certain directions.

承續安全不容妥協與短空長多的觀念,持續改善與堅持理念相對容易,對杜邦而言只有Commitment沒有景氣好壞與經費問題

Recognition of the fact that the safety morale or attitude of the actual workers will mostly govern the success of the safety effort and consequently any program to be successful must be designed to reach every worker through regular organization lines.
The "off the job safety" programs began in the 1950's.
The standards for safety continued to evolve and became more demanding all the way to the 1990's at which time DuPont adopted the goal of zero injuries.

Modern Process Safety Program
一樣源自於事故教訓,製程安全與洗腦式的安全文化是兩回事
Process Safety Management (PSM) at DuPont began with a serious process incident in Louisville, Kentucky in 1965, which resulted in12 fatalities, 61 injuries, and a property loss of over $50 million. Following the incident, corporate management asked each site to review their production facilities and procedures to assess the potential for catastrophic events and to take appropriate preventive measures. An annual review was also instituted to ensure that process additions or changes did not create new hazards, and in following years, many sites conducted annual, in-depth process hazard reviews to evaluate the process safety of site processes.

By 1973, new guidance was issued that detailed suggested hazard review methodologies and frequencies. A corporate guideline for Process Hazards Reviews was issued later in 1978 following several serious incidents, and a comprehensive, integrated corporate Process Hazards Management (PHM) guideline was issued in 1979, over 10 years before the OSHA PSM Standard.

The incident in Bhopal, India in 1984, involving the release of acutely toxic methyl isocyanate (MIC), resulted in about 2,000 deaths and thousands of injuries, significantly raising the awareness of both industry and regulators about the potential for off-site catastrophic incidents. The response in DuPont was immediate. At the time, a product in the agrichemicals business used MIC as a key ingredient in the manufacture of an insecticide. Following Bhopal, the R&D organization quickly developed a new process using inherently safer process principles to allow use of a less hazardous material as the starting raw material, eliminating the risk of shipping and storing MIC.
A Highly Toxic Materials (HTM) Subcommittee was also formed to review DuPont operations worldwide. This review found that DuPont’s traditional emphasis on management responsibility for managing safety and PSM was effective in minimizing risks both on and off-site. Additional safeguards were also recommended, though, to provide an extra margin of safety, providing additional guidelines for facilities, storage, operations, transportation, detection, and community protection. In 1985, three new corporate guidelines were issued on Off-Site Risk Assessment, Community Preparedness, and Management of Highly Toxic Materials. The Off-Site Risk Assessment guideline provided ‘‘management with information to aid in identifying and assessing potential off-site public exposure,’’ and included risk reduction measures incorporating many principles of inherently safer processes.
In addition to corporate PSM and HTM programs, individual businesses developed specialized process safety programs, often related to reactive chemicals, to help ensure the safety of site operations. In many cases, these programs resulted from serious process incidents, leading to formation of global teams from multiple manufacturing sites with similar processes to help prevent further incidents. These teams shared technical and process safety information, developed specific guidance and standards for promoting safe operations, developed hazard evaluation methodologies, provided training, and developed audit protocols.

In late 1996, the corporate ZIP (Zero Incidents . . . Period!) Team was formed to increase focus on eliminating process-related injuries and incidents, while at the same time building business value for PSM. The ZIP Team reaffirmed the vision of ‘‘The Goal is Zero’’ for process incidents and communicated these key messages:
  • There is no silver bullet, no single answer, to improving process safety.
  • The goal has to be ZERO process-related injuries and incidents. The question is, not IF, but HOW, this goal can be achieved, just as it is for personal safety.
  • PSM is a business issue, not only a manufacturing issue, requiring the contributions of a broad cross section of the organization to ensure success.
  • Businesses therefore need to establish a sustainable continuous improvement process toward achieving the goal of zero PSM injuries and incidents that is embedded in business planning.

All businesses and regions were requested to have implementation plans by the end of 1997, which would be included in executive level discussions on performance and planning. The result was a renewed corporate effort to drive continuous improvement activities that led to upgraded standards and practices, training programs, evaluation tools, and business metrics that have greatly impacted PSM performance in DuPont. Subsequent improvement activities, including a PSM Discovery Team effort in 2006, have helped to improve PSM programs on a continuous basis.


The Key to Success

The key to success in the DuPont Safety Program is the deeply held belief that safety is everyone's responsibility - not one designated individual, team or department. Each person must be individually responsible for safety based on the position they hold and according to the circumstances they face. It is not good enough for a plant manager to search for people not wearing proper safety equipment. The plant manager must look at his duties and make judgments about what policies will lead to safe behaviors. This also includes policies about hiring, firing, and development of people along with policies on standards for design of equipment. Operators and mechanics also have individual safety responsibilities. They should not expect to wait for their boss to tell them to wear proper safety equipment. Discharging that responsibility takes courage to do what is right, integrity to not use safety as an excuse to avoid work or other unpleasantness, and to recognize that an incredible amount of persistence is required. Safety is never finished; you have to do it again and again, every day. This is something that must be learned through experience, but you don't have to wait until someone is hurt. It is important to create places to practice and drill people in safe behaviors like the training of fire fighters.




杜邦背後的秘密
1.一開始就知道很危險與具備風險自負自擔的觀念,因此很用心與謹慎
2.還是被意外與事故打臉,慘痛教訓(賠光資本與痛失親人)讓它在管理的觀念更佳提昇(權責觀念不同於一般公司)
3.重賞之下必有勇夫,高薪聘請到優質的員工與管理階層(有助於接受自律到互助)
4.安全的關鍵是觀念與態度,而觀念與態度要靠組織文化與洗腦,洗腦就要洗骨子裏(連下班後在家都一樣)
5.與其說杜邦重視安全,不如說杜邦重視的是管理(只是絕對不是那ㄧ堆code element...)


結論與心得感想:
1.只活了20年的公司,不要以為人家200年的經驗可以簡單套用在自家
2.老闆沒有賭上身家性命或以身作則的覺悟,不要以為(嘴巴喊喊)引入人家的那一套會有效
3.沒有足夠的福利或利潤分享回饋給員工,不要以為員工會跟你認真(可以陪你喊喊口號/下樓手扶扶手無妨)
4.沒有一批具備持續改善與管理觀念的優質幹部,不必奢望會落實與扎根
5.處在今日十倍速變化的產業環境,管理與持續改善的觀念可以通用、但實務操作不能食古不化(必須因地因行業制宜)



對照(打臉杜邦)組文章

安全需要破除迷信與迷思,兼聽則明


摘錄:
DuPont’s recent record does not give this hope promise. DuPont has created the most dangerous sites in the country and the pollution continues to make thousands of people sick. Even though the company is growing and expanding in markets in foreign countries, the polluted lands it leaves behind are un-developable and un-livable. DuPont’s policy for sustainable growth is just greenwashing.
DuPont’s true record is not an example of a corporation others should model in order to meet sustainable development and safety goals. DuPont must drastically change its safety practices and its course of direction to gain back the public’s confidence.
Denial and non-reporting seems to be the true walk of a company with so much talk. DuPont’s current safety program under the name STOP encourages a system of non-reporting by blaming the worker and relinquishing management of responsibility. Harmful conditions result, and catastrophes at DuPont plants are catastrophes for workers and the public.



感想:

  1. 杜邦是間普通公司,唯一特別的是它撐過事故導致的破產、各種法律訴訟,公司名稱流傳下來,甚至成為安全的代名詞...
  2. 不同時期的杜邦其實不是同一個杜邦
  3. 天下的工安都是一樣的:老王賣瓜自賣自誇


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