Eastman Chemical Co.’s Kingsport, Tenn., site serves as the company’s primary manufacturing site and company headquarters. With nearly 10,000 employees and contractors working in more than 550 buildings on a 900-acre site, a good emergency notification system is crucial.
In 2011, as part of an overall company safety improvement initiative called “All in for Safety,” the Eastman team formed a cross-organizational team to better understand their communication needs and gaps.
“We discovered we needed a system that would allow us a way to directly contact 100 percent of our site personnel, support new technologies and legacy devices and use a variety of devices and technologies,” explained Keith Bennett, Eastman’s area supervisor for plant protection services. “System redundancy and reliability were also important considerations.”
A unique need for Eastman’s system upgrade was the ability to apply the alerting technology in two different applications on the same site.
“We have those in corporate office settings who prefer desktop pop-ups, texts, emails, etc., and those in manufacturing areas who only have access to two-way radios and pagers or other intrinsically safe devices,” said Bennett.
Eastman selected a vendor through an 18-month process of presentations and multiple trips to customers already using their alerting systems, including military bases, universities and other industrial applications. The result is a system called “Eastman Alert.”
“This internal brand identification became the basis for a unique logo in each emergency notification message,” said Bennett. “We also developed an Eastman Alert SharePoint site where all employees could find or access all emergency related information and training materials. Developing this ‘brand’ was a key part of our communication and training to all of our employees and contractors.”
The team implemented the upgrades in several phases, for a current total of 10 different notification devices.
“We have also begun deployment at other Eastman sites,” said Bennett. “We recently installed this same system at our Martinsville, Va., facility. It allows us to use the same back-bone software architecture but customize the system to support the unique requirements and devices at each location.”
The Eastman Alert system handles three notification categories. The first category is “Operations Critical” messages related to important events that do not have an imminent danger but are important to communicate quickly (plant utility load reductions, ambulance calls, fire standbys and accidental discharges). The second category is “Weather” notifications (severe weather watches and warnings for winter storms, high winds, thunderstorms, etc.). The third category is “Emergency Alerts” for events that pose some eminent danger and require an immediate response (criminal activity, hazardous vapor release and a fire with evacuation).
Different groups are targeted by activating different devices based on the message category. For true emergencies, the goal for Eastman Alert is to directly notify all employees and contractors on the site. This system allows multiple, redundant communications devices to be reached simultaneously with the single click of a button. Communication with these alerts is also bi-directional, so individuals can confirm receipt of a message and indicate if they are safe.
“Eastman is committed to the safety of all of its employees and contractors,” said Bennett. “We have significantly improved our ability to notify our employees and contractors when there is an event. The Eastman Alert system is one more way we ensure when there is an emergency, all affected personnel are contacted in a quick, thorough and efficient way, helping protect them from emergency situations.”
For more information, visit www.eastman.com or call (423) 229-2000.
