Selection of Suitable Safety Activities and Experience of Safety Condition Establishment

In recent years, Japanese manufacturing firms have been building factories in the developing countries of Southeast Asia and employing local personnel. Using local employees who were basically people of the agricultural countries implies difficulties in both technical and safety terms. This study examines how quickly and effectively the companies going into the developing countries establish a standard of safety. The authors focus on Vietnam and Thailand as representative countries. To their surprise, the authors find that all 27 companies that answered their questionnaire had introduced “5S activities” at startup and were continuing to use them. In addition, nearly 80% of the companies began using “KY activities”, “Safety proposal activities”, and “Examinations of accidents” soon after startup. One of the authors Akihiko Hidaka, when serving as the president of the Thai subsidiary of a Japanese chemical company, developed safety activities to reduce work-related accidents. And he knew that the kinds of safety activities he developed were same as above 4 activities. So he evaluated these activities and judged them to be effective. The authors conclude that “5S activities”, “KY activities”, “Safety proposal activities”, and “Examinations of accidents” were the activities best able to improve safety effectively and quickly in developing countries. The authors describe the safety activities carried out at the Thai company and then describe the most important features of the methods used to establish safety conditions at the firm.