On November 25-27, Toyota Material Handling Europe joined forces with the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) to bring together 80 health and safety professionals from industry, public sector and workers’ representatives at its headquarters in Mjölby, Sweden.
 
Closely working alongside EU-OSHA for 5 years now, Toyota Material Handling strongly believes in leadership and in exchange of best practice cross sector in order to raise safety standards in Europe. The Safety Days theme “Indicators of Organisational Safety and Health Performance” was chosen to provide an opportunity to benchmark measurements and management of health and safety at work and share real life experience among participants.

During the 2-day event, 80 experts shared experiences, challenges and successes. Participants included 10 global or European safety managers in major companies, 5 global purchasers, 8 senior Swedish safety experts, 10 suppliers and 4 workers’ representatives. The programme featured a varied format with plenary sessions, workshops, plant tours, visit of the Safety Dojo – a unique concept to Toyota, introduction to Toyota Production System (TPS), a fair on safety features of material handling products as well as opportunities for networking.

Reyes Gonzalez, Global Safety Manager at Heineken:
“The Toyota Safety Days were an excellent benchmarking event with an outstanding programme providing an invaluable opportunity for networking with peers”.

Tom Schalenbourg, Sustainability Director at Toyota Material Handling Europe adds:
“Our objective is to bring together safety experts, suppliers and customers in order to improve safety practices for our employees, our customers and our suppliers’ employees. This collaborative work is a key part of our Dual Impact Sustainability strategy.”
The programme also included presentations and sessions on EU-OSHA’s 2014-15 campaign “Healthy Workplaces Manage Stress”. The EU-OSHA and the Swedish Work Environment Authority presented insights on the business case for managing work-related stress and the toolkits made available by the “Healthy Workplaces Manage Stress” campaign. This event follows previous benchmarking events in 2014 organised by Heineken, the European Technology Platform on Industrial Safety (ETPIS) and Lego. The next event is planned in Brussels on March 5-6, 2015.

(Photo: From left to right. Agneta Ring, Sustainable Development Champion TMHE, Matthias Fischer, President and CEO TMHE,  Martin Brebach, EU OSHA board member, Tom Schalenbourg, Sustainability Director TMHE, Raghad Pedersen, Global EHS Manager LEGO, Dietmar Elsler, Project Manager Prevention and Research Unit EU-OSHA, Reyes Gonzalez, Global Safety Manager HEINEKEN, Olivier Salvi, President INERIS Developpement, Julia Flintrop, Project Manager EU-OSHA, Marc Maureaux, Corporate Communications Manager TMHE, Tony Ageneau, Service Technical Operations Senior Manager TMHE )