Accidents

Accidents

The number of working days lost fell by almost 4,000 in 2005 compared to 2004. This was due to a marked reduction in the number of accidents at production plants overseas, in some cases by up to 50%. One reason for this is the introduction of a Group-wide occupational safety policy, which helped to ensure that the plants integrated occupational safety measures more systematically into the management process and improved their occupational safety communications. In addition, at individual overseas plants, projects such as “Self-Assuredly Safe”, which had proven their worth at European locations, were also introduced.

Accident indices

The accident frequency index indicates the frequency of industrial accidents relative to the total number of hours worked (formula: number of industrial accidents x1 million / no. of hours worked).

The accident severity index indicates the severity of the accidents by calculating the ratio of the total number of working days lost to the total number of hours worked (formula: number of working days lost x1 million / no. of hours worked x10).

As shown by the accident frequency index, the number of accidents showed a clear downturn in 2006 compared to 2005. This too is due to the more systematic approach to occupational safety at the Group’s overseas plants. By contrast, the severity of accidents at the Group increased slightly in 2006 compared to the previous year.