First Aid Cards provided to Mining First Aid Kits. Continuous Improvement to go on this year too

OSTRAVA – CZK 226 million. This is an amount saved by OKD in 2010 thanks to the Continuous Improvement Project. The optimization teams performing activities to solve specific tasks assigned by the management and the employees themselves with their good ideas contributed to it with an identical amount of CZK 113 million.

“Last year the skeleton staff and contractor employees filed a total of 742 meaningful improvement suggestions. 558 projects have been implemented so far; implementation of further 154 projects is in progress, and in the database, we have 24 projects to be implemented in the future,” announced Ivan Brodský, Advisor to Mining Inspection Department, OKD Headquarters.

The total motivation bonuses of CZK 2.85 million have been paid out to OKD’s and contractors’ personnel for their successful suggestions. Approximately five percent of OKD’s employees have participated in the Program, which is considered by the management as success. “It also represents an invitation for the others to participate in the Program so that this number will increase,” Leo Bayer, Chief Operating Officer, said in handing the keys of a new Škoda Fabia car, an extraordinary award within the innovator competition, over to Radim Borový, a Darkov electrician. Apart from the car, other valuable winnings were drawn at the individual mines: trip vouchers according to one's own choice, TV sets and notebooks.

It was just the competition conclusion that literally meant a boom of good ideas. Whereas in January such ideas could be counted on fingers, in November there were tens of them. Ondrej Škorík, the former Chief Foreman of the preparation working party and current mining fitter, Paskov Mine, Chlenovice site, also came up as one of the last innovators with four completed Suggestion Cards. And he has lived to see the general spread of one of his suggestions. “I was inspired by the first aid kits in cars, which must be obligatorily equipped with so-called First Aid Cards under the new regulation. I proposed that our mining first aid kits be also provided with such First Aid Cards,” stated Škorík.

“Providing the first aid kits with the First Aid Cards is very suitable in the first treatment of an injured person. From the educational and promotional perspective, it would do no harm to post such Cards on the safety notice boards,” Zdeněk Potenský, Head of Occupational Health and Safety, Paskov Mine, assessed the idea. Even though Škorík’s suggestion has not primarily brought any financial savings, it is an asset to the whole company.

Radek Lukša