AstenJohnson, Charleston, S.C., USA, is a global producer and supplier of paper machine clothing, advanced fabrics, filaments, and paper machine equipment. With a history that stretches back to 1790, AstenJohnson currently serves paper manufacturing companies in over 50 countries around the globe. 

 

AstenJohnson, like each U.S.-based supplier company, is required by law to provide OSHA approved safety training for its entire field staff. In AstenJohnson’s case, an outside training agency was hired to provide this training. 

 

According to Bubba Livingston, VP – Sales and Marketing, Americas, this corporate safety training program was not aligned to the safety training needs of the paper mill, and did not always reflect the most up-to-date safety situations. 

The program required nine course modules on separate topics that added up to 5-6 hours of orientation for each person. Some of the topics were focused on the paper mill environment while a great amount of material was generic and not applicable to the work environment. In addition to the training time, the system required detailed tracking of all of the mill training and which staff person was cleared for each mill. 

 

This corporate training is conducted in addition to the safety training required by each customer mill that they visit. The duplicated training can add quite a bit of time to each field staffer’s time, usually spent with a laptop in a hotel room down the road from their customer mill, rather than helping their customer from inside the mill. 

 

Bubba has been on the supplier side of the industry for 26 years, working exclusively with AstenJohnson during his career. His first decade with the company was spent in the manufacturing area, before he moved into sales and marketing. His current role with the company is Vice President of Sales & Marketing for the Americas. During his time in the industry, Bubba has seen a movement towards greater safety awareness. Possibly due to increased litigation issues, this heightened awareness has led most mills, suppliers and contractors to incorporate more safety training into their work environments. 

 

 

 

While visiting a TAPPI conference, Bubba came across literature on the TAPPISAFE® program and visited a special safety break-out session to learn more about it. During that session, Bubba found that TAPPISAFE® addressed several key training issues: 

• TAPPISAFE® is aligned closely with the paper industry’s safety needs 
• TAPPISAFE® meets OSHA training requirements and satisfies corporate training standards 
• TAPPISAFE® is kept up-to-date 
• TAPPISAFE® eliminates the duplicated training activity – thus reducing time and budget.

Additionally, because AstenJohnson’s field staff add an average of more than 35,000 miles to corporate vehicles each year, Bubba found that other courses offered by TAPPISAFE®, like the "Defensive Driving" courses, allowed AstenJohnson to consolidate their training programs. An overview of the TAPPISAFE program is available online (Adobe Flash Player required).

 

Now that the TAPPISAFE® Basic Safety Orientation program has been implemented within the company, the training time for each AstenJohnson field staffer has been reduced from five or more hours to two hours each year. According to AstenJohnson Training Administrator Penny Crosby, the feedback from staff has been good, and the program has been easily adopted internally. Additionally, she reports that the safety orientation courses are much more focused and more effective. 

For those mill clients that use the TAPPISAFE® program, AstenJohnson is able to use the saved safety training time to provide more time to providing the critical support and service to their customers.