The Escalating Consequences of EHS Incidents for High Tech Manufacturing Industry
ERM has held a series of forums with senior managers from some of the world leading industrial companies in 15 cities around the world. The goal was to explore what these companies see as the EHS challenges facing business and industry in the coming 10 to 20 years. One of the key themes that emerged from these forums was the increasing magnitude of the financial, business and reputational consequences of major EHS incidents in various sectors of industry, including in High Tech manufacturing. Examples such as the death of 5 workers and injury of 12 others at an explosion at the Mitsubishi Materials Corp. plant in Yokkaichi, Japan in January 2014 and the death of 3 workers from a gas link at the SK Hynix plan in Incheon Korea in May 2015 are among a number of incidents in the high tech sector’s highlighting the industries vulnerability. Forces such as tightening legislation, increasingly sophisticated non-government organizations (NGO’s), savvy media, global connectivity, and more pervasive science have driven society to be less accepting of poor EHS performance and these driving forces are just getting started. In this presentation, the speaker articulates these challenges, looks at what companies are doing to try to avert the consequences of a major EHS issue, and describes what more can be done to help a company position itself for sustained success.