Basalite: Improving task completion rates with BLR’s CAPA Tool
About Basalite Concrete Products
Basalite Concrete Products, founded in 1964, is one of the largest manufacturers of building materials in the western United States and Canada. The company is headquartered in Dixon, California, but continues to expand its geographic footprint through acquisitions and the construction of new facilities. Its focus now, as it always has been, is delivering high-quality concrete products, decorative rock, recycled plastic edging, and other innovative products.
Challenge
Before implementing BLR’s environment, health, and safety (EHS) management solution, EHS Hero®, Basalite was relying on e-mail to assign action items to team members, which didn’t provide a systematic way to follow up on whether tasks were done. This created a challenge in keeping track of who was responsible for which action and by when it should be completed.
Basalite had undergone a series of extensive audits and needed a better system for tracking corrective action items when a hazard was discovered. The company wanted training documents, photos, due dates, priorities, and responses kept in one location, as well as the ability to follow through to the completion or abatement of a hazard.
Solution
Basalite learned of EHS Hero, specifically the Corrective Action Preventive Action (CAPA) tool, and began implementing it, initially with a webinar for its EHS coordinators across its 20 locations. Once action items from its audit reports were migrated into EHS Hero’s CAPA tool, all EHS coordinators were trained individually until they were well versed in using the software.
With EHS Hero in place, Basalite was able to successfully address and track action items through to completion. It was able to hold its manufacturing locations accountable for tasks they have and haven’t completed. The integration of the job hazard analysis (JHA) and CAPA tools has helped improve task completion rates and clarify who has completed a task or abated a hazard and when. The key to success has been having a uniform procedure for documenting and addressing actions and one place to store them all rather than having 20 disparate processes.
“It’s made my life a lot easier. One of the biggest things that BLR has done for us was create a uniform format and a place to keep actions. The tool keeps a place where we can have version control. We can see when things were updated most recently and what changes were made.”
—Conrad James, Vice President, Manufacturing Engineering & EHS
Moving Forward
Basalite remains an active customer and has worked with BLR® to find new ways to use the comprehensive EHS management and compliance offerings. It uses several of the EHS management tools and continues to use the JHA and CAPA tools hand in hand to address corrective actions and mitigate hazards.
Access a downloadable version of Basalite’s story here.
