Domino Theory in Practice
Construction Products Company (CPC) is a distributor of lumber, pipe, and concrete products.
Its customers are typically small building contractors. CPC’s facility consists of an office in which orders are placed and several large warehouses. Contractors place their orders in the office.
They then drive their trucks through the appropriate warehouses to be loaded by CPC personnel.
Because the contractors are small operations, most of their orders are also relatively
small and can be loaded by hand. Warehouse personnel go to the appropriate bins, pull out the material needed to fill their orders, and load the material on customers’ trucks. Even though most orders are small enough to be loaded by hand, many of the materials purchased are bulky and cumbersome to handle. Because of this, CPC’s loaders are required to wear such personal protection gear as hand hats, padded gloves, steel-toed boots, and lower-back-support belts.
For years, CPC’s managements team had noticed an increase in minor injuries to warehouse personal during the summer months. Typically, these injuries consisted of nothing
worse than minor cuts, scrapes, and bruises. However, this past summer had been different.
Two warehouse workers had sustained serious back injuries. These injuries had been costly to
CPC both financially and in terms of employee morale.
An investigation of these accidents quickly identified a series of events and a central causal behavior that set up a domino effect that, in turn, resulted in the injuries. The investigation that CPC’s warehouses became so hot during the summer months that personal protection gear was uncomfortable: As a result, warehouse personnel simply discarded it. Failure to use appropriate personal protection gear in the summer had months had always led to an increase in injuries. However, because the injuries were minor in nature, management had never paid much attention to the situation. It was probably inevitable that more serious injuries would occur eventually.
To prevent a recurrence of the summer-injury epidemic, CPC’s management team decided to remove the causal factor-failure of warehouse personnel to use their personal protection gear during the summer months. To facilitate the removal of this factor, CPC’s management team formed a committee consisting of one executive manager, one warehouse supervisor, and three warehouse employees.
The committee made the following recommendation: (1) provide all warehouse personnel with training on the importance and proper use personal protection gear: (2) require warehouse supervisor to monitor the use of personal protection gear more closely; (3) establish a company policy that contains specific and progressive disciplinary measures for failure to use required personal protection gear; and (4) implement several heat reduction measures to make warehouses cooler during the summer month.
CPC’s management team adopted all the committee’s recommendation. In doing so, it removed the central causal factor that historically led to an increase in injuries doing the summer months.