Safety First

There’s a sign that hangs over the production floor of Cardinal IG in Greenfield that states that the plant’s employees are the best in the world, and in order to be the best in the world, they need to look like it, act like it and perform like it.

For those three things to happen, and for the plant to be efficient and productive, Safety Manager Bret Skellenger believes that safety has to be at the forefront of every employee’s mind from when they arrive to when they walk out the door.

Cardinal IG, which manufactures insulated windows on a made-to-order and made-to-stock basis for many large window companies and has been in Greenfield since 1974, recently received a Community Enrichment Safety Award at the Iowa/Illinois Safety Council’s annual conference.

The award was because of Cardinal IG’s involvement in the City of Greenfield getting a weather station that greatly impacts decision-makers locally for when to sound outdoor warning sirens. They are tied into Cardinal IG’s indoor warning system which tells workers when to take shelter from a storm.

Skellenger is the May subject of the Adair County Free Press and Fontanelle Observer’s “People of Adair County” story series, which prints the first week of each month.

Building a culture

While Skellenger has worked with Cardinal IG for almost 28 years, it was seven years ago that he made his transition into the safety sector of the company that employs approximately 500 people over three shifts daily.

“My job is basically to keep up on [Occupational Safety and Health Administration] regulations, working with our people out on our floor to create the safest environment we can for them,” Skellenger said. “Basically, we make sure everyone’s going home safe at the end of the day.”

Skellenger explains that just in the seven years he’s overseen safety for the Greenfield plant, workplaces such as his have focused even more extensively on employee safety. There have also been a gamut of changes in that time to regulations that relate to worker safety.

“I’m not going to say we didn’t care about safety, but it just wasn’t at the forefront like it should have been. From a corporate standpoint and at our Greenfield plant we’ve really pushed for everybody to up their safety standards,” Skellenger said. “We’re actually now working with OSHA to become VPP certified, which is the Voluntary Protection Program, and that’s basically the highest award you can get in safety.”

In order to reach that standard, there are many moving parts and hazards that Skellenger and the workers of the plant are tasked with identifying. Education is required for workers so they know the risks of their job and how to steer clear from the dangers those risks pose.

Data relating to incidences is tracked through a rating system called TCIR, or Total Case Incident Rate. There’s a certain target point employers have to meet in order to get into the VPP program and the Greenfield plant is on target in 2019 to have one of its lowest scores it has ever attained.

Skellenger explained that when you work with glass, there’s obviously a threat on the assembly line for cuts and lacerations. Guards and automation are used when feasible to trim down the threat and workers are actually touching the glass a lot less than one might think. Additionally, workers are shifted from task to task periodically so that they’re not mindlessly all of a sudden doing the same task over and over, which would have the potential to heighten the risk of accidental injury.

Additionally, a fire drill is held at the plant every October. The plant also held a tornado drill recently. On Saturday, the plant participated in an emergency management coordinated drill where the plant was hypothetically struck by a tornado. There were fake injured employees who were transported to the hospital. Other facilities in the area, like nursing homes, participated in the drill as well that utilized first responders from all over the county.

You can coordinate and follow through with drills all you want, but Skellenger says the safety of Cardinal IG comes back to the willingness of its people to focus on it.

“We’ve always thought production, production, production. Now, we’re thinking about safety first,” he said. “We need the production and need to do the job but we need to do it safely. It has been a real culture shift over the last couple of years and it has been really amazing to see.”

Under Skellenger’s lead is a team of management that works on plant safety. There are also over 60 workers in the plant who are trained as first responders. If an emergency is announced over the intercom, these first responders know to respond quickly to whatever area the emergency is in to assist those in need.

Steve Bricker is the Plant Manager. Skellenger praised his efforts and the efforts of others on the management team at Cardinal IG because he believes safety starts from the top.

“If you don’t have your support from the top, you’re not going to get anywhere. The supervisors are really good at getting their people engaged in safety out there. We have a safety task force and a VPP team. They all work together toward creating the safest environment, answering questions people might have and sending them in the right direction if they don’t have the answers,” Skellenger said. “We have a meeting once a month with all of our management team to discuss safety, how things are going and if we need to make improvements.”

About Cardinal IG

Skellenger’s oversight covers a huge facility that covers 14 acres under one roof. The made-to-order and made-to-stock assembly lines are on differing sides of the plant but each of the plant’s eight assembly lines is similar in appearance.

In its busiest season, Cardinal IG manufactures 16,000 to 17,000 insulated windows each day. Keeping things local, G&H Motor Freight Lines, another longtime Greenfield company, is one of Cardinal IG’s carriers that takes the plant’s finished product to where it needs to go.

Cardinal IG receives its raw glass from other subsidiaries and each assembly line receives an order from the buyer as to what they’re making with that particular piece of raw glass.

“On our MTS side, a customer may order large quantities, so we may just run a bunch of windows of one size. We put them on pallets in our warehouse until they’re ready to ship. Our west side is our MTO side, which is more individual windows of different sizes that are made and sent to customers at the job site,” Skellenger explained.

Glass is put on a conveyor at the beginning of an assembly line. A spacer is added between two panes of glass early on in the process and that space is filled with argon, a gas which is used to insulate the window. Later down the process, whichever customer is ordering that window gets its logo laser-etched on it — think Pella Windows, for an example — and a secondary seal is also put on the window to make sure no argon escapes. A robot at the end of the line packs the windows or they’re hand packed, depending on the line.

Immersed in his community

Skellenger was raised on a farm near Menlo in Adair County and seems proud of the fact that he’s still making his community a better place through what he does on and off the job.

A 1990 graduate of Stuart-Menlo High School, Skellenger briefly attended college but started working at Cardinal IG the summer after his first two semesters and ended up staying. As they say, the rest is history.

When he began working toward becoming Safety Manager, Skellenger went back to school and earned an Associate’s Degree in Occupational Safety and Health. Skellenger and his wife, Andrea, have three children — Dylan, Breann and Karsi. In his spare time, Skellenger likes investing in his family by coaching his children’s youth soccer and tee-ball teams. The Skellengers reside near Fontanelle.

“At Cardinal, we’re really all about safety. If we don’t have that commitment to our people to keep them safe then we’re not going to have workers,” Skellenger said. “That’s our commitment and we think it’s very key here.”