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Quality Nook Fire Mock Drill at WorkEZ, Chennai

FIRE & SAFETY IN THE WORKPLACE

Safety comes from Quality – Quality comes from Compliance –

Compliance comes from Discipline – Discipline comes from Great Culture

Safety in Quality and Management
Safety is an integral part of and an attribute in Quality Management even as per ISO

9001:2015 in an indirect manner. Some of the ISO clauses which are more relevant to
Safety are as follows:

• Clause 4.1 – Context of the organisation: Internal and external issues affect the
quality of outputs. Identification of issues and risks associated with issues will take place Conclusion
in this.
• Clause 5.2.1b (under Quality Policy): The organisation’s commitment to satisfy In ITES zone, electrical fires are more possible than other types of fires. Hence, we have air con to
regulatory and statutory requirements, which includes a safe environment, must be reduce room temperature (heat) and CO and dry powder extinguishers are kept in fire-prone areas.
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included in their policy. Applying simple common sense, within workplaces, can avoid such electrical fires:
• Clause 6.1 – Address risks and opportunities: Risks associated with issues captured
as per Clause 4.1 must be addressed by the stakeholders. • Avoid connecting too many plugs in junction box sockets.
• Clause 7.1.4c (under Environment for Operations): The organisation’s support to • Turn off switches and disconnect the power cable once the battery is full for laptops.
maintain a suitable physical environment from factors such as temperature, humidity, • In case of desktop/monitor usage, shutdown and switch-off before leaving the workplace.
noise, etc. • Alert and escalate — when you sense electrical burn smokes, flickering lights, electrical circuit
Fire as a Hazard broken, etc.

Fire is one of the uncontrollable incidents that will lead to massive Hope the article is useful. Thanks for reading the content. You may look forward to reading more
destruction when it becomes a hazard. Fire becomes a hazard quality-related information under this section in the next edition.
upon:
(a) the quantity of combusting materials (fuel, solid materials - G Alageswaran (Team Quality, VLS Content)
[electrical and non-electrical], etc.),
(b) degree of room temperature, and Quality Terminologies (in Alphabetical Order)
(c) the amount of air ventilation (which leads to more O to increase
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the chain reaction of fire - see Image 1). Image 1: Fire Tetrahedron A Audit B Benchmark C Continuous improvement

Hence, by separating the factors (a) to (c), we can block the chain reaction of the fire. D Defect E Efficacy F Five whys (5-whys)
Some common fire extinguishers are: G Gap analysis H Histogram I ISO

1. Water – extinguishes fire by removing Heat from the J Juran K Kaizen L Lean
Tetrahedron
2. CO – extinguishes fire by removing Oxygen (O ) M Metrics N Non-conformance O Objective
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3. Powder – extinguishes fire by blocking chemical Chain
reaction from O –Heat–Combustible materials P Pareto Q Quality R Random sampling
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4. Foam – extinguishes fire by separating O and S Safety T Typos U Units of measurement
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combustible materials + cooling down Heat

Moreover, depending on the sources/types of fires, the SOURCE: ISTOCK.COM/SARAWUTK V Value Stream Mapping W Wastes X X-bar chart
selection and usage of extinguishers (see Image 2) will vary. Y Yellow belt Z Zero defect

Image 2: Different Types of
Fire Extinguishers Babu M & Manasa P (Team Quality)

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