Foundries and machine shops are known for being dangerous places, but Bremen Castings Inc. (BCI) in Bremen, Indiana is celebrating going 495 days without lost time. Lost time injury is defined as an occurrence that resulted in a fatality, permanent disability or lost time from work of one day or shift and possibly more.

The family-owned company, founded in 1939, produces quality gray and ductile iron machined castings for a global market, using 92% recycled ferrous material.

President JB Brown notes, “We have an incredible staff that comes to work and every single day, but we’ve implanted strategies and procedures to make sure that everyone is accountable for everyone’s safety while at work. One example is that require all employees to file “near miss” reports. So if there is a cable in the way or a slippery step, the employee is responsible for moving it and filing a report to inform upper management of the issue. This example is then looked at by our executive team to determine how we can possibly change things in the future to prevent a possible situation from happening.”  

BCI’s last lost time occurred over a year ago and required an employee to miss one full shift of work. Since then the foundry and machine shop have gone incident free.

The company says that in the future, it would like to establish a “zero incident culture” that includes 1,000,000 man hours without a lost work time and two years without lost work time.