Accounting, statistics, and even marketing experts have an old adage: “You can make numbers say anything you want them to.” But when it comes to manufacturing’s safety numbers, and foundry safety in particular, the metalcasting industry should instead turn numbers into a catalyst for action.  

In a recent AFS webinar presentation about U.S. manufacturing safety statistics, industry expert Ted Schorn, vice president at Enkei America, underscored the useful application of safety data within foundries––he recommends benchmarking your company’s record against the national statistics. Trends revealed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ (BLS) most recent reporting serve to remind foundry management: Nothing in the business should take precedence over the daily focus on keeping all people safe at work. 

“This is, of course, is the most important priority for all of us: the safety of those from whom our companies gain benefit,” Schorn said. “At Enkei America, I have over 700 people who depend on my decision-making for their livelihood and their safety and security. Obviously I’m very interested in any metrics that might give me some insight into how I might do my job better. All of us are in that position, as well.”

Statistics serve as a mirror for the foundry, providing a clear reflection for the entire industry and enabling companies to benchmark their safety performance against national averages within specific categories––or “topography” of injuries. Foundries would do well, Schorn suggested, to pay attention to the data, which is precisely what insurers do to evaluate and grade the industry. 

Overall, Schorn says metalcasting safety trends based on BLS 2023 data demonstrate encouraging progress. The foundry industry as a whole had a value of 5.3 as its incident rate for recordable injury––meaning that for every 100 people working for a year, 5.3 of them experienced some type of reportable injury or illness. This 2023 number represents a reduction from the previous year’s 5.8 rate. In fact, from 2020–2023, the industry saw a positive downward trend.

Schorn noted foundries tend to lag behind private manufacturing in safety performance. “There isn’t any particular reason or legitimate excuse why the foundry industry can’t be as good as all private manufacturing,” he said. “We do not want foundries to have any different reputation than all manufacturing––in fact, we’d like to have the foundry industry recognized as having better performance than the average manufacturing facility.” He said all of private manufacturing showed improvement from an average of 3.2 recordable injuries to 2.8. 

Yet metalcasting has its bright spots. Aluminum foundries have shown significant improvement, dropping their recordable injury rate from 7.1 down to 5.6. Iron on the other hand, took a slight step back and went up from 6.4 to 6.7, Schorn said. Meanwhile, steel showed good improvement, as did steel foundries, with a reduction from 6.9 to 5.6. Non-ferrous die casters made slight improvement, declining from 4.6 in 2022 to 4.5 as a total case incident rate in 2023.

Referring to Figure 1 he said, “I’d really like to see no gap between the line representing all private manufacturing and all other lines representing the various types of casting in the foundry industry. That’s our goal. And once we achieve it, we’d like to accelerate our efforts down to where we can be very close to zero.”

DART and LCIR

Total case incident rate is built from a few different elements, Schorn explained. One is the portion of recordable injuries that require days away in restricted time (DART). Foundries have improved in this area––aluminum leads with a downward achievement from 3.5 to 2.8––and other categories also showed improvement. In the case of days away in restricted time, iron, for example, made progress from 3.6 to 3.1––“a very good and desirable outcome,” Schorn observed. Non-ferrous die casters were very close to the value of all private manufacturing, which was nonetheless “ahead by a nose,” he said. 

A further subset of BLS’s safety data is the recordable injuries and illnesses that require lost time, also known as “lost case incident rate (LCIR). Figure 3 shows less downward movement over the long term but does show some downward trending, Schorn noted.

“That is also indicative of efforts to try to reduce those more severe injuries and illnesses that require a person to miss work, either at home or in some medical facility,” he said. “We see that all of the foundry categories showed improvement in our lost case incident rate, and all foundries showed a quite healthy reduction from 1.7 down to 1.2. Non-ferrous die casters had a great year in 2022, dropping from 1.3 to 1.2. That’s excellent. And if we can get a bit below that, we will be at an all-time record.” 

Looking at illness rates, Schorn says the numbers show an encouraging improvement in every category. “All foundry categories went from about 48.5 as an illness incident rate down to 32,” he said. “I work at a non-ferrous foundry, and I’m delighted to see a 59.5, which is a pretty high number, drop down to a more reasonable 27 as a value for our illness incident rate––and ferrous foundries also made some improvement. 

The ‘Topography’ of Injuries

For reporting purposes, injuries and illnesses are separated by different characteristics; OSHA calls this their topography. One aspect of topography is “nature”––what happened to the person that caused their injury. Among all of manufacturing as well as foundries alone, strains, sprains, and tears were the most frequent cause of injury that resulted in days away in restricted time over 2021 and 2022.  

In order of frequency shown on Figure 4, additional natures of injury as designated by OSHA were: soreness and pain; cuts, lacerations and punctures; fractures; bruises and contusions (which occurred at a higher rate among non-ferrous die casting); multiple traumatic injury (which was too small a number for BLS to report on); and heat burns.
“The takeaway from Figure 4 is that when we think of our injury composition, it is quite the same as all manufacturing to a great extent,” said Schorn, “and we need to focus on those injuries that result in what health professionals call MSDs or musculoskeletal disorders––things that relate to ergonomics, posture, lifting, as well as activities involving repetitive motion and movement of weight.

Another aspect of topography is known as the exposure––referred to in Figure 5 as composition––meaning what created the harm to the individual. Generally, for all manufacturing, falls, slips, and trips are the No. 1 cause of lost time injury; the No. 2 is “struck by,” and No. 3 is “caught in,” which typically involves a crush type of injury.

Exposure to harmful substances and environments is the last category of exposures. For foundries, molten metal is an obvious, harmful substance, and the high temperatures on a plant floor (especially in summer) certainly qualify as a potentially harmful environment. “We do have a fairly high lost time incident rate as a result of exposure to harmful substances and environments,” Schorn said, “but not quite as high as all manufacturing, which is interesting. It’s also interesting that non-ferrous die casting apparently has a much lower incident rate associated with those concerns, possibly because the metal is kept in a more constrained environment in die casting.”

Schorn added, “It is disconcerting that there are so many ‘struck by’ and ‘caught in’ injuries––we need to address this in our workplaces.”

Body of Evidence

A third aspect of injury or illness topography is the part of the body that is affected. Schorn said data shows hands are very likely to be injured by caught-in and exposure to harmful substances cases. Back injuries are next, and, somewhat surprisingly, foot injuries also had a high frequency rate in foundries. 

Shorn firmly asserted that one part of the human anatomy that’s harmed at a high rate should definitely not be on the foundry list. 

“It’s particularly disconcerting to see a high level of eye injury,” he said. “I believe we are well able to prevent eye injuries with very available means of protection such as safety glasses and the various types of face shields. These have been around for a long time, and to continue to have this level of injury to the eyes with lost time seems unnecessary and certainly preventable.”

Similarly, hearing loss, though very preventable, has trended up as the largest percent of the total recordable illness in foundries. “We’ve made some progress from 2021, which was pretty high for hearing loss,” he said, “… but we certainly have a way to go. Hearing loss is related to the decrease in ability of a person to hear, and it’s based on time-weighted averages, which is somewhat complex to calculate.” 

He added, “We have a very well-established personal protective equipment regime to utilize to protect our hearing. There’s no reason why we can’t drop this number and make further progress.

Does Size Matter?

The size of a foundry does appear to have bearing on its safety performance. The smaller plants (1–10 and 11–49 people), which comprise a large portion of the AFS membership, have historically been high contributors to the industry’s recorded incident rates, except for the last two years, Schorn noted. BLS data reflects an improving downward trend from 2015–2023. 

Moving to the opposite end of the spectrum, data for foundries with 250–999 show a much lower level of injury rate––a good performance, says Schorn. And those exceeding 1,000 employees demonstrate safety performance almost parallel to all private manufacturing. Schorn attributes this to larger firms’ access to more abundant resources from which to build and staff strong safety programs. 

According to Schorn’s analysis of BLS data, the foundries most in need of concentrated safety efforts is those employing 50–249 people.

“They’re big enough to have complex operations and a wider cross section of humanity working for them, but perhaps not big enough to have mature, dedicated resources to appropriately advise and guide safety activities within their facility. Somehow, we have to reach those facilities and help them improve.

Schorn concluded with a simple message: “I would encourage us all to take this data, compare it to our own companies, prioritize what to work on, and collectively improve these numbers.”