The U.S. House of Representatives has passed the HEROES Act (Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act)¹ which will, if approved by the Senate and president, require OSHA to develop a standard for workplace protection against Covid-19.

Under section 120302 the legislation says specifically (emphasis is mine):

“(a) EMERGENCY TEMPORARY STANDARD

(1) In general—in consideration of the grave danger presented by COVID-19 and the need to strengthen protections for employees, notwithstanding the provisions of law and the Executive orders listed in paragraph (7), not later than 7 days after the date of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Labor shall promulgate an emergency temporary standard to protect from occupational exposure to SARS-CoV-2—

(A) employees of health care sector employers;
(B) employees of employers in the paramedic and emergency medical services, including such services provided by firefighters and other emergency responders; and
(C) other employees at occupational risk of such exposure. ...

Each article in this series presents new tools for increasing return on investment (ROI), enhancing customer satisfaction, creating process excellence, and driving risk from an ISO 9001:2015-based quality management system (QMS). They will help implementers evolve quality management to overall business management. In this article we look at the clauses and subclauses of section 8 of the standard.

Clause 8: Operation

Clause 8 contains the requirements for planning, designing, and bringing to fruition your products or services. The processes within this clause must be robustly implemented to achieve business excellence. They must also be continually scrutinized for foreseeable risk.

8.1 Operational planning and control

8.1 and excellence
The “plan” is a series of interrelated process, each with acceptance criteria, and each with metrics that tie to the organization’s key objectives and key process indicators. Or, at least that has been my interpretation while leading scores of implementations.

(Freedom: Cincinnati) -- Freedom IOT brings productivity improvement to any shop floor with its comprehensive Smart Manufacturing Platform that seamlessly connects all industrial assets and business systems, and provides real-time data collection and monitoring.

The Freedom Platform connects and collects data from any industrial asset, regardless of brand, age or process and reports are accessed anytime, anywhere via browser devices—including desktops, laptops, tablets, or smart phones. This cloud-enabled IoT platform includes customizable dashboards and alerts and helps identify manufacturing bottlenecks and inefficiencies and streamlines manufacturing processes.

“Our Freedom Platforms provide the operational intelligence our customers need to increase efficiency, OEE (overall equipment effectiveness) and profitability,” says Jeff Price, executive vice president of Freedom IOT. “Machine tool technology is advancing rapidly and we make the complex matter of properly identifying inefficiencies very fast and simple. Real-time production monitoring arms production teams with the data required to optimize utilization, improve quality, root out inefficiencies and maximize their profit.”